Illinois Railway Museum Blog

We have been very busy this early fall.  All the volunteers that work in barn 10 have been recruited into the fall the painting crew.  As you now know various painting projects have taken priority this year.  We are trying to get all these projects completed before winter starts.  By now you have seen my blog progress on the IC 3345.   That is not the only department car being reworked. We have also been slowly restoring and repainting the roof of the, John Mcloughlin, our 8-1-2 Pullman sleeper.  The painting of  black is the culmination of our hard efforts.   Please take a look!  It might not look like much but some of our volunteers have spent over 8 months working for this moment.  In addition,  Howard Gierer and crew have repainted five roofs on our Rock Island fleet.    .   Please consider sending in a donation the help support more  restoration improvements on this heavy weight sleeper.   The John Mcloughlin  project needs your support.          Thanks            Roger

This last Tues and Wed saw the final step in the painting process on the IC 3345.   Howard, with my assist, applied the yellow yellow stripe to this side of the 3345. We had a very small but productive crew, Tuesday.  It seems like a few of  the steam department volunteers have also been enjoying helping the coach department.    This was the case Tuesday when Matt Gustafson decided to help us.   He is a very energetic young man who jumped right in and began sanding the other side of the coach in preparation for the final coat of brown.     Thanks for all your help, Matt.  Hope to see this coming Tuesday.      I can not overemphasis the amount of time/work that goes into just masking off this entire 85 foot coach.    Painting is the easy part compared to the time spent setting the lines for the yellow stripe.   For a clean straight edge we used 3M  blue tape purchased from our local Sherwin Williams paint dealer in Huntley.  If you would like to see more passenger cars painted in the future we would like to suggest a donation to the coach dept  fund or to the individual pieces listed here.     Up for consideration for future painting projects are the following pieces.    Although not in any order of importance are the following projects.     Milwaukee Road X5000, Pennsylvania  Cascade Knoll,   CB&Q 481, CB&Q 1923,  John Mcloughlin and Mount Harvard.                      Thanks              Roger Kramer