Illinois Railway Museum Blog

The Ceiling

WOW!  Bill Peterson and I walked out the the Chicago Great Western X 38 snowplow to see about the work being done on installing the new ceiling inside it.  Here, Bill looks on while Victor Humphreys and Jim Leonard fit another board.  As you can see they are within sight of the finish line.  At this stage almost every board has to be trimmed, notched, or otherwise fit around supports and other features.  And of course to prepare for these steps, there is the invisible work in the shop.  Almost every work day, Victor primes more new boards so they will be ready.  While winter has arrived, if the weather does not get too bad and there is little snow cover, look for this stage to be finished by the end of the year.  I suppose I should not have said that - predictions are almost always the kiss of death.

Windows

We continued to work on new windows in the shop for our Pennsylvania Railroad wood caboose.  Bill Peterson was introduced to the fussy work of custom fitting each joint for a new sash.

More Fitting

In between other work, John Faulhaber took on sash number three and worked on one joint at a time.  After lunch two were done pretty well, and we proceeded to set up the glue press and do the final assembly.  We started these about two weeks ago and two are assembled already!  Of course these are pretty simple compared to some sash we have tackled.

Sign Box

Tim Peters continues to work toward making two new roof mounted sign boxes for Chicago Rapid Transit 1024.  The originals were removed by about 1914 so these are all new fabrications based on photos and evidence left behind on the roof and carbody.

More Window Work

I mentioned John Faulhaber was doing other work.  Early in the morning he could be seen at our mortiser machine plunging square holes into stiles for new passenger car windows.  These are old machines and a flat leather drive belt finally separated and broke.  John and Rod Turner crafted a replacement and by later in the day, the machine was back in service.