Illinois Railway Museum Blog

Continuing the restoration news on the John McLoughlin is the repainting of the Men's bathroom. Mark Hoffmann started by abrading two walls in late 2018.    They were primed to preserve the surface from rusting but we never top coated them. 2019 brought an increase in activity in the entire sleeper. That is when the work in the men's bathroom resumed. You will see, in these pictures, our renewed efforts.

We have sanded this wall and now Sandi is ready to prime.

Partially primed.

Now the wall has been primed and Sandi is applying the top coat.

The wall is painted but still lots to do.

We now switch our efforts to this wall. A future mirror will be installed in that large white area.

Now we have started the hardest job. Working on the ceiling and using a sander and electric wire wheel to remove the old paint. Thats Tim Fennell inspecting Sandis fine work.

Taking a break from the ceiling we worked priming and painting on another wall.

Not shown in any of these pictures is the actual painting of the ceiling. As we found out in the Mt Harvard, working over your head on the ceiling is no easy task. The ceiling did get painted! Many thanks to Mark, Andrew, Tim, Bob, our volunteers.

Here we just finished painting the last two walls. A corner sink gets reinstalled underneath the mirror.

Here I have installed most of the brass shelves. Already, it looks more like the mens bathroom.

With much of the work completed we moved on to the stripping the old paint from the steam and water pipes below the sinks. They are now also painted. That almost finishes the job. Removing the clutter will make it even better!

After reinstalling all of the wall light fixtures, brass shelves and two sinks we moved on to the more difficult job! The team was to begin the most labor intensive work yet, the repainting of all four sections. Removing old paint from ceilings and walls was going to be a major, major job! We first had to remove the four seat cushions that made up each Pullman seat. No easy task. The seat cushion themselves are very heavy. Made up of metal coil springs, straps and wood, each weighted about 40 pounds. Yes, That's one reason why these sleepers were called heavyweights. Everything about these Pullman sleepers is super heavy. They were made to last a long time. My back can attest to that. Anyway, the next blog on the John Mcloughlin will focus on our repaint of the four sections. Donations to continue this project can be sent to: https://www.irm.org/donations/category/passenger-car-department/     Thanks, Roger.