Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Ripped

The biggest job for the day involved making new tongue and groove boards to replace rotted stock inside the MILW X 5000 dynamometer car.  Buzz had jointed the new lumber last Wednesday.  The next step was to set up the table saw and rip all the wide planks down to about 2 1/8 inches wide That was a lot of ripping but by noon or so, Bill Peterson, Warren Neuhauser, and Dick Melzer are standing in front of a large pile of the slats.  We started that job earlier with John Faulhaber also helping, especially with the fences, jigs, and set up on the table saw and soon to be used shaper.

Groovy

Next - the wood was marked for the 'best side' and each was run through the shaper to mill the groove and a small chamfer.  All in one pass using our power feeder.  The crew feeds, monitors and catches each piece.  Not heavy work but many hands to do that and inspect each piece coming off the machines.

Tongued

The second pass through that machine puts the tongue and a chamfer on the other face edge of the boards.  We kept the crew busy throughout most of the afternoon.

Results

The result was about 450 linear feet of new stock, here being stacked up ready for priming and painting.  We purposely kept the tongues shallow as this will be installed on the inside, (concave) side of the car, and each piece will have to be able to create that inside curve.

A Stripper

Tim Peters was stripping the many layers of old finish off of one of the doors for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.  He put on quite a show acting as a stripper wearing hearing protection.  Those were needed since he was right next to the shaper milling operation which is quite loud.  He also ran quite a stack of new basswood planks through the table saw and the planer.  This was the first steps to making boards to curve over the roof ends on the 1024.

Windows

Victor Humphreys applied the first coat of maroon paint to two of the new windows for the Chicago Great Western X 38 and also did more painting on the small quarter round strips for installing the glazing.

Doors

Not a lot of work on the new doors for the X 38 since the tongue and groove work was a full time process for many hours.  But the door joint final fitting came out well under the direction of John Faulhaber, and we did the planing and finish work on the four solid panels which will fill the lower two spaces on each door.  It is sitting in the press, ready to be glued up on Wednesday.

Window Posts

Lorne Tweed and Eric Lorenz are going over all the details for the the window posts on Cleveland Transit System 4223. While many of these are nominally the same, there are also many for special mounting at the front, rear, or near the side doors.  All seem to be measurably different from one another.

Panel Door

Dave Fullarton stopped by with a small wood electrical box door, I think he said for the CTA 2000's.  Whatever, you can be sure it relates to our rapid transit cars.

Done

John Faulhaber and Rich Witt helped and the new door was made in no time while the shaper crew labored on.  Dave moved on to painting it at once with GLYPTOL insulating varnish.

What Is It

We will close with the WHAT IS IT quiz of the day.  Roger Kramer has a box like dispenser removed from the Ladies Room of one of our heavyweight Pullman Passenger cars.  We think it held flat folded paper cups for drinking water, if any of you are old enough to remember those. 

Late breaking news.  The following are the raw pictures sent to me overnight by Jon Fenlaciki.  Two large cranes were hired and the Silver Pony is back on wheels.  I do not have the whole story so the pictures will have to speak for themselves, but a step that has taken three years has been accomplished.

Crane Arrives

Set Up With Locomotive Standing By

Max Tyms Below Car Body

The Lift

Many members were on hand to help on a FRIDAY, no less.  They included Jon Fenlaciki, Nick Kallas, Rod Turner, Max Tyms, Bob Olsen, Mark Secco, and Jim West.