Illinois Railway Museum Blog

I am still intending to catch up with BLOG posts on the various restoration activities, now so late in posting.  Maybe one more week and things will improve.  For now I will just post groups of pics without a specific date for the work, and of course many of these are not strictly making sawdust in the wood shop.

Ready For Anything

Long time member, supporter and volunteer, Jim Heinlein, has been helping out most Tuesdays on the Chicago Rapid Transit 1024 restoration work.  Here he is suited up ready for work with much appropriate protective gear.  Or is that an alien invader from the most recent UFO?

Chipping

No, I am sure it is Jim working with a needle gun to remove a half century of grease, dirt, and rust from one of the trucks under this vintage elevated car from Chicago.

End Platform

Meanwhile Tim Peters continues his excellent progress on the platform on the west end of the car.  Much of this area has been completed, presenting a great look at what this entire project will result in.  Here, Tim is working on the metalwork, and you will immediately see why this series had the nickname of a GATE CAR.  It was a very labor intensive operation in train service as a trainman had to be stationed for each set of cars, and then at each stop, he had to straddle the car ends above the couplings to manually swing open the gates for passengers to alight or board.

Ad Card Panels

We would like to welcome new volunteers Eddy Pszczolkowski and Andy Oliveri who pitched in on the Cleveland Transit System 4223 project.  Here they are removing many of the old layers of paint from the panels which are installed above the standee windows on the car interior, and hold the ubiquitous ad cards seen on most city transit systems.

Heater Ducts

Other work continues on the car interior as shown by Eric Lorenz.  Below the regular windows at floor level there are a series of metal panels and vents which serve functionally as heater air ducts.  While these original pieces are in very poor condition and will be replaced with new ones, they are positioned in place to allow measurements to be made and to confirm the arrangement of each panel and its location.