
Welcome to the blog for the Freight Car Department at the Illinois Railway Museum. Here you will see updates on projects, maintenance and repair schedules and news on pending or proposed acquisitions. Also, our department seems to be the defacto manager of the IRM Woodshop. Stay tuned for notes on projects that include making piles of sawdust.
Our department also does a lot of the artwork and lettering for our restored cars, and in addition to freight cars, has included electric cars, internal combustion, steam locomotives, and steam passenger cars. You may see some of this work posted in the blog.
The images on these blogs are 'thumbnails' only, but if you click on them with the left mouse button, you will see the full image. If there is a project you are interested in, please contact me and we will try to get pics/updates of work our dept may be doing in that area.
To take advantage of the info elsewhere on the IRM website you will also see links to other areas of interest.
Bob Kutella
Collection Curator
Comments
Mon, 09-08-2025 08:22
Good job on the Burlington Nortern 9976. OK.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:56
No new news that I have heard of thus far.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:53
I'll also be doing another update on it soon. Keep en eye out for that.
Tue, 08-12-2025 12:47
A little work was done to it for Diesel Days this year. You'll see photos floating around for the temporary short term job that was done to make it [...]
Wed, 08-06-2025 13:01
Is steam car CN 15444 going to be coming to museum several times it was to be moved to muesum
Sat, 07-19-2025 18:56
Yeah, sadly it's still there as of 7/19/2025
Thu, 06-12-2025 19:14
Its been 14 years guys, where is the unit? Like really? Did you guys misplace it? Or are repairs taking that long? At this point be might we will have [...]
Wed, 04-09-2025 17:40
Jamie Thanks for the update. She's gonna shine like every thing else you guys do! Smeds
Thu, 03-06-2025 16:28
Yes, there is a wye. Those two have been MU'ed on diesel days a year or two ago.
Wed, 03-05-2025 14:04
7009 number boards look good. Is there a way to turn a locomotive around at IRM? In case you ever had a mind to connect 7009 and 6847?
Fri, 03-29-2024 21:26
We're slackers and spend more time working on the equipment in the shop than keeping all you readers updated. We'll work on it, but I'm sure updates [...]
Thu, 03-14-2024 08:02
What happened to the Department Blog? It's been over 2 years and I still regularly check for updates, but nothing comes...