Doug Rundell reports on his and James Ham's work on Monday, 10/10/2022 to prepare one of the cars for Polar Express.

With James’ help, I was able to set up and finish the caulking of trolley board saddles on car 43 using SikaFlex-1A. What I encountered on Monday on the south end of the car was less deterioration than I saw last week further north. There were a few gaps where the caulk had embrittled and pulled away, opening a pathway for water infiltration. I’ve completed all the inspections and repairs.

Longer term, it would be great to pull off the trolley boards and really get easy access to the saddles, but that’s a major project for the very distant future.

Looking at Car 40 is that we don’t have a major water problem on the roof, and we don’t have gobs of peeling paint on the ceiling.  

Car 45 has more significant issues. I hope to get to that after getting 40/43 ready.

Doug grounds the trolley wire to the track so that he can get on top of the car with no danger of shock, even if the power is turned off.   Since the wire is continuous, grounding it on track 2 grounds it for the railroad.

Next, Doug tags out the power supply station so that no one will come by and turn on the power.

And here, Doug has tagged out the power supply building assuring additional protection.   Safety is NUMBER 1 at the Museum

Now comes the business of caulking around the areas of the roof where the trolley board brackets are mounted.

A CTA electric steeple cab, shoving AE&FRE diesel #5, a Wilson Refrigerated box car, and Illinois Central caboose 9648 northbound on the main while a North Shore car passes it southbound. And YES CTA L202 pushed that entire train up the hill all the way by itself, multiple trips! Talk about the little engine that could!

Our beloved NSL Silverliner finally into the barn for FRTM to do another award winning restoration!

CTA 4288 stripped to bare metal for epoxy primer to be applied this week!

The canvas roof got finished the weekend of 09/17 - 09/18/2022 on 4288

Some much needed trimming done along the line with a hy-rail bucket truck and hy-rail chipper, contracted by the museum with HRH Rail Services 

Thee is reinstalling the overhead access panel with new fasteners in the north end of CA&E 458.  This work is in anticipation of the first coat of epoxy primer being applied any moment.

Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett and steadfast right hand man Mike Giles took 458 for a test run just a few days ago. Quickly found one retriever was malfunctioning. Below you can see that when Jeff took it apart, the main “retrieve” spring had failed. Jeff was able to make repairs with parts on hand

Sneak peak,,, look at that shine

Told ya any moment. Here’s Kyle applying the epoxy primer to the south motorman’s compartment

Mike is masking and painting the last step well on 458

The next car restoration is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 1930 Interurban Trolley 756.   These photos show the first steps of moving 756 into the Allan C Williams car barn to start the project.

Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett, with the crew of Mike Giles and Connor Ladley, took NSL 756 southbound on our line to do a run-around at Coleman siding, and upon the return northbound trip were lucky to have encountered a CN freight train.

There is a lot going on at the Allan C. Williams car barn with activity on CA&E 316 and CTA 4288

Here, Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett has a big smile of joy having Eric at his side to unexpectedly jump start the restoration of CTA 4288

Two happy guys! Jeff Bennett and Eric Zabelny spent a whole day clearing out 4288’s contents so the restoration could again start moving. Having just finished, smiles all around.

CA&E 458 has been at the cusp of its first test run for weeks now.

This will be the first time out and down the line with its new roof, poles, and brakes.

Our horns were in desperate need of service as they sounded a little sad. Well when it comes to air horns here at Fox River, there is one guy we all think of, Superintendent of Operations Mr. Patrick Storm. The guy never saw an air horn he didn’t like! So one quick message to him and down he came to the barn. Tools in hand he climbed up and gets right to work. Thanks Patrick!

Mike Giles smiles and is clearly happy at the weekends progress with CA&E 316’s south end air brake control installation.

Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett, here with Mike Giles, spent the entire weekend cleaning and rebuilding these two brake valves for CA&E 316, then custom fitting all new piping to the valves.

Here you can see Jeff working into place all the newly cut, threaded, and bent galvanized piping on the freshly rebuilt and cleaned brake valve.

All this was done IN-HOUSE!

New Track 2 High Level Platform

The material for the new Castlemuir Track 2 platform was recently delivered to the Museum Campus.   Construction has started on the platform footings as well.    The new platform will start at the north end of the Track 2 brick platform and will have a ramp up to the level of the car boarding on track 2.

Photo by Doug Rundell

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. 

Work is moving a full throttle on Chicago Aurora and Elgin 458.

Here you can see the end of car train door threshold rebuilding that is taking place.  Once the old rotten wood was removed from the threshold, it revealed some rot on the car body.  The car body rot needed attention. On the right you can see the badly rotted / rusted out panels of the door way and threshold.  On the left you can see the rebuilt body steel primed and painted.

Meanwhile, the train door also needed some rebuilding. The water intrusion rotted out the bottom of the door, but no fear, replacement wood and metal has all been installed.

Here Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett is working with Thee, to rebuild some brake valves for 458. Thee is learning all the details that go into servicing one of these complicated units!

John labors away at paint removal in one of the motorman compartments.

Here’s a close up of the extent of the car body rot around the train door.

And a close up of the final repaired section of the car body around the train door.

Chief Car Officer Jeff Bennett is installed a newly rebuilt brake valve on CA&E 458

John and Thee are continuing on repairing the rot damage in the thresholds

Jeff back under the car to work on the main brake valve assembly. There is a lot of contaminates in the brake system from it sitting open for years, so every line and system has to be opened up and cleaned.

Kyle giving the smoking compartment one last wipe down, with hopes to get a coat of primer on it today

And John… poor guy, seems like he’s always chipping away paint. What can we say? He knows his work well!

Mike looking up a Jeff, wondering what in the world will Jeff ask for next!

The North end of 458 has had all the lines removed, cleaned and the rebuilt brake valve installed.