Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The watchword for the day was - EYES ON THE SKY!  There were several waves of thunderstorms which resulted in four or five power outages in the shops.  Luckily none of the outages occurred when we were in the middle of a major operation on the machines - such as the Berlin Sander.  Lots of rain - SEVEN inches reported by some some towns in the last 24 hours and maybe 2-3 more today (Thursday).  Lots of puddles on the grounds and if one of them went up another 2 inches there would have been water coming in the shop.  At least one of our regular volunteers woke up at 3 AM to find 18 inches of water INSIDE his basement.  Lots of closures, flooding, and more rain in the area.

Berlin Sander

Dave Rogan, Paul Cronin, and Victor Humphreys are wrestling the heavy station door we recently made through the infeed end of the Berlin Sander.  This is a heavy complex machine but one which does a good job of finishing projects, achieving smooth and flat frames on doors and windows, results not easily possible by hand sanding.  The operation of this machine in recent months was almost always accompanied by some drama.

Outfeed

John Faulhaber joined the above crew at the outfeed end of the sander as we made pass after pass, checking after each one.  With the door done, we moved on to run the two new windows for Boston & Maine 1094 through the machine.

Ceiling Panel

We continue to have a pretty good sized weekday crew working on the Cleveland Transit System 4223 PCC car.  Paul Cronin and Dave Rogan are set up to try a fearsome looking circle cutter in a half inch drill motor to cut a hole in one of the new panels.

The Hole Thing

We were somewhat surprised the first hole went without incident and two more holes were completed in this panel.  Then some hand sanding and cleanup - finally primer applied to this by the end of the day.  There are many of these narrow panels needed, with holes to accept the bulls eye light fixtures.

Large Ceiling Panel

The project team had determined that most of the original panels, saved for many years, could not be restored.  So the first order of business is shown here as Lorne Tweed, Dave Rogan, and Simon Harrison remove blanking panels installed by Toronto.  Then on to trace exactly the length and width, and the openings in a new piece of stock.  Cut that out and then on to the next one.  Three completed this day.

STEAM

Yes, you are seeing Nigel Bennett of the Steam Department in our shop prime painting the many panels and parts for the 4223 almost as fast as we could make them.  Thanks Nigel, you are always welcome to volunteer to help out here.

At the Table Saw

Jeff Brady was caught in the act at the table saw as he made new wood repair parts for the roof work on Michigan Electric 28.  Norm Krentel was also on site and we saw a steady stream of panel goods leaving the storage shelves and making their way onto the roof.

Windows

Rich Witt was checking our first piece of steam bent window beading after the new round top windows for Boston & Maine 1094 came from the Berlin Sander.

Leaded Glass

Ted Anderson stopped by the shop to check on the windows.  Here, he and Rich are checking dimension for planned leaded glass to be made for these.  You will see copies of original Pullman drawings for these windows, those found in our Pullman Library and printed by Ted.  The wood shop work is about done on these as we completed trimming off the stile extensions and cutting the bevel on the bottom rail.

Grids

With all the start-stops caused by the spotty power, Paul Cronin managed to dis-assemble the failed grid box for Chicago Aurora and Elgin 36.  He sorted through the parts and cleaned up several grids on the wire wheel, those not too far gone or broken.