Illinois Railway Museum Blog

There was a lot of good work done by a lot of good people and here is a sampling of what was going on.  Of course I did not record images for all the work, but you get the idea.  Still, a lot of photos to post, if you do not mind.

Panels

Victor Humphreys was prime painting the moldings and the panel inserts for the new doors for Chicago Great Western X 38.  As the saying goes - there is always something to be done.  In this case, every week, we take a step closer to completing these doors.  Good friend and volunteer Kirk Warner was visiting from Florida - he and Victor are working on getting some new glass cut for the project.

The Other Side of the Coin

Or - the other side of the panels.  They also got primed, in this case with a different color primer, since the interior will get a lighter coat of finish paint.

Window Post Caps

There continues to be real progress on Cleveland Transit System 4223.  This PCC car is getting interior window post caps, here shown with Eric Lorenz fighting the good fight.

Window Post Caps

Loren Tweed is also working hard on the 4223 project, the current task of installing the post caps.  They have all but a handful of 'stinkers' installed.  The 'stinkers' being a few that need more persuasion to fit properly.

Tenons

We made major progress on the two 'special' round top windows for the Boston & Maine 1094 passenger car.  A lot of different volunteers contributed to the progress - here Bill Peterson is working on tenons for the round top rail.

Coming Together

The tenons have been cut and fit for the first window and Rich Witt is working to trim and fit the joint for an exact match.

Brian Patterson Photo

All the parts are fit and clamped into alignment and a hardboard template fixed in place.  Then a pattern cutting router bit follows that to finish cut the exact curves and shape.  Tim Peters, Buzz Morisette, and Bob Kutella discuss ways to work with the grain of the pieces rather than fight them.

Chips Flying

Rich, Tim and Buzz are making the chips fly on the first sash with the pattern.

Number Two

Rich has just helped the tricky routing on sash number two.  The point here is to inspect the job carefully and do any touch up work while the template is still in place and the tooling is set up.

A Jig

The next tricky wood working job du jour (it seemed every job was tricky today) shows Tim cutting a special springboard jig to aid in creating new molding for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.

Trail One

Time for the first try at the molding profile, using custom ground knives on our spindle shaper.  In this respect every job is special and a variety of guides and jigs need to be designed and put in place to make quality work - and do that safely.  It is always a learning experience - ask Tim if you do not believe me.

If At First

You do not succeed try again.  There are a number of factors in play as Victor Humphreys and Tim run another blank piece of white oak through the machine.  Height, width, position of the knives, feed rate, how the work is supported, etc.

Next

Let's try again.  If you look at the series of photos above you will see things added and changed to the set up as one by one a potential problem is noted and we fix that area.  Now, if only we had somebody that ran a shaper for a living for 40 years, he would probably converge on the best way quickly and be laughing at us.

The Door

Time to end this post and show you the door.  That is, the new door we are making for our depot.  The last two pieces were tenoned and are in the process if final fitting.

Yesterday we hosted five visitors from the Itasca Park District and showed them our restored Milwaukee Road caboose.  It became sort of a workshop/clinic/seminar as we related many of the obstacles encountered and the choices we made along the restoration path.  Victor Humphreys and Buzz Morisette were the real stars of the effort which included a 'field trip' to Barn 11.  THANKS!!  So I really had little time for shop work and photos.  Nevertheless the able shop crew turned out a lot of work.

Door Bottom

First out of the gate, Dave Rogan executed fourteen mortises in the door parts for a new door in our depot.  Here, Dave Diaz and Jim Leonard are shown with the bottom rail, cleaning out chips and doing the layout work for the tenons.

Assembly

Near the end of the day, Paul Cronin, Jim and Dave had done a lot of the fussy work to trim and fit each of six of the joints and we were able to dry assemble those members into what now what was starting to look like a new door.

Mortising

The set up and the tooling on our mortising machine was changed over and Rich Witt and Dave Rogan are plunging the mortises for two new windows for the Boston & Maine 1094 passenger car.

Stiles

Rich and Dave show off the results in the odd shaped stiles for the above windows.  These are to be round topped and the thinking behind these pieces is a bit different from the more typical railroad sash we have made.

Ribs

Buzz was back in the shop in the afternoon and was producing more roof ribs for the private car ELY.

More Door Work

Henry Vincent makes more progress every week on the repairs to a train door for Chicago Aurora & Elgin 36.  Still one more wood piece to make this week, and then a lot of additional parts to be cleaned, painted, and installed.  An interesting feature is that this door has provision for the hang on headlight when on the front of a train.  So there is wiring in a channel through the wood door framing to the metal bracket, for two wires. 

Roof Panels

Norm Krentel and Jeff Brady went a field trip to a local supplier and picked up a load of new plywood panels destined for a new roof on Michigan Electric 28.  They were busy prime painting those for much of the day remaining.  In the shop some of our crew produced about 70 thin slats of poplar, to be used on the front bonnet of the car roof, much as Jeff and Norm have completed for the rear car roof.