Illinois Railway Museum Blog

                                                      With the Thomas event and the wonderful 4-day Railfan weekend now behind us work  began again in earnest.  We began by disassembling and then sandblasting spare rusty RI seat frames that we found in our storage field.  These will be installed in the middle of the car where the original six were removed to make room for the "bar."  Gary Sherman has made it his responsibility to remove any old bolts and to sandblast the rusty steel parts. Jan, Jane, and Loraine began priming them after they were sandblasted. Having the sandblaster operational is a very big plus.  Then they will be topcoated and reassembled.   Future blogs will show the results of our efforts.                        I would like to welcome to the crew another new member to our team.  Jan G. Hervert has been helping with the new task of repainting the six seat frames.    Welcome to the 2612 project, Jan!!                                               Upcoming, in the next few blogs will be the renewed effort of removing more old paint. This time the area below the windows and around the doors will be needle chipped. A much faster process than scraping a section by hand w/ paint scrapers.                          Remember to send your donations in for the new barn.    Maybe I should use the plural of barn, which is barns.  Yes, there is some talk about more than one barn being built. Wouldn't that be magnificent!                  Roger