Welcome Eric Zalbeny!
Eric comes to our humble museum with not only the love of everything Chicago L, but with extensive experience in 4000 style car restoration. This works out fantastically, as we have CTA L car 4288 that is dead in the middle of a complete restoration! Eric wastes no time in jumping into the project! Great to have you Eric!

AE&FRE Locomotive 5 has had ailing issues with its #2 engine for years. Never enough to take the locomotive out of service, but certainly has been on the list of things to do.

Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett and Connor Ladley have spent the last couple weeks getting to the bottom of the issue, once and for all.

Turned out to be a few things, but the major one was the fuel injectors. They were really bad! One so bad it was broken into two pieces internally. Parts in the cylinder heads were also in need of replacement. 

New injectors were ordered and the repair was completed. All the other little things it needed were attended to as well. Engine two now runs great, with no cranky issues! 

It was decided that proper “four corner column lifts” were in order to continue the Car Departments great work and efficiency. 

Chief car officer Jeff Bennett, seen above riding the rails with ease, delivering the electric column jacks one by one to the barn.

Jeff found a seller in Toledo Ohio with a set that fit the bill nicely! Jeff’s daughter Rylee, who is now 16, was quickly taught how to drive the truck with a gooseneck trailer and she was sent to retrieve the jacks. (Rylee did a fantastic job making the run, and is looking forward to the next road trip to pick up stuff for dad).

Here these beauties are! We can now put one of these at each corner of anything we have in the fleet and lift it as one complete car!

This is truly a game changer for us! Stay tuned and check back often to see these in use.