Illinois Railway Museum Transportation Extravaganza 2010

[PlainBrownR2]

Well another car show at this museum has come and gone. We got the usual primo spot down right by the depot. We also share our place with the Packard club, so the Studebakers and the Packards are usually shown together. There was an unfortunate note as I became a spectator for the first time in more than 10 years as the Lark decided that even thought it would run on the R1 carb we rebuilt, an electrical bug popped up in the Motorola's alternator circuit at the last minute(more like 3 am)to keep the car from charging, to my extreme disappointment Anyway here's some highlights from the day:

A few photos from our spot.....










A few photos of the other clubs around the grounds....








Hmm, here's an idea for the 4 barrel crowd(or whoever) for scribing a plaque on the valve covers....


These are replicars, however still plenty neat.....




I love the cabovers of this type as they were part of my childhood back in the late eighties early nineties..


Unfortunately, the bus pool, which usually shows up at these events, was all but absent this year. I asked the military historian club who sits next to them about there whereabouts, and he was about as sure as I was on where they were this year. So some photos from the bus barn will have to suffice, lol.







I think I'm missing something.....oh right, the trains, lol. This museum is HUGE. I can assure you that with the amount of stuff on the grounds, you may not be able to see all of it in one day. Here's a few photos of what was running today. The steamers are still among the missing as they are undergoing FRA inspection on the boilers, so they had a couple of diesel passenger trains out today.





These are from around the grounds...







A little bit of my own family's history is wrapped up in working with these guys, namely alot of cousins from then and BNSF now.....


I toured through the passenger cars here, if you're not afraid of the stifling heat, and the narrow aisleways, it's quite worthwhile to see the cabins.




IRM has a diner, which functions as a restaurant for the grounds. It is still undergoing restoration, but I like their pizza



Finally, here's a couple of movies I took. The first was of a tour through the passenger cars, which although had some narrow aisleways, had some really secluded rooms, if you didn't mind bunking with a stranger on a trip.


The second is of the trains they were running. I should explain the three engines here as I've set foot in all three. The engine you're first looking at is the E5 for the Nebraska Zephyr. I rode that last year and it has a ride quality that is smoooooothhhhhhh. I've also gotten pictures of it from last year.

The engine with the Santa Fe moniker on it is an FP45. Out of the handful that were built, there is about six engines left(all of ATSF heritage) scattered around the country. When it wasn't operating, I've walked through this engine on the grounds. The cab, and all of the internals are underneath the cowl, so on a 20 degree day, the cowl provided a relatively warm place to work on the engine. The engine is described as being left in a rather sad state though inside and out, so it needs some attention

The engine behind the FP45 is one of the few remaining Wisconsin Central SD45's. I've gotten a cab ride on this one, which really rides like a log wagon(freight engine, who said they had to be comfortable, lol). The reason why there's few of them left is a few years back CN bought the line, and basically began "removing" these engines from service, so a number of them ended up on the dead line. In a conversation with one of the volunteers there who runs a local hobby shop here on the matter, I managed to get a nice cab ride up and down the mainline in the last remaining engine. It's neat as it has a visual monitoring system on the back wall of all of the vital functions of the engine(you can access various sources of information on various components from the touchscreen on the computer from this spot), as well as a nice opinion of CN scribed on the rear of the cab wall. I also have pictures of this engine inside and out as well.


If you want to see anymore pictures, here's a link to the album:
http://tinyurl.com/29ue4d2
password: firestorm

[55champion]

Looks like it was a great day. Beautiful pics, thanks for posting.

[PlainBrownR2]

I forgot to add in the case of the Nebraska Zephyr, the whole trainset is stainless steel(kinda the same stuff Don Simmons uses in the exhaust systems). However, the trainset was restored and had to be reshelved for two years a few years back due to a little accident. Now, when us model railroader guys pull a train around a curve with too long a set of cars and the car ends bump into each other, they usually derail, we get disgusted and rerail the cars. In this case somebody tried to back the train down into a spur that had a curve that was too sharp and ended up crunching the ends of some of those cars, which were freshly restored. This resulted in docking the train, sending the cars out to hammer out the dings and dents in the ends, which became a very expensive proposition since it was all stainless(which at this level is a very costly material to make railroad cars from), and putting the train back together again, to the disgruntlement of the museum higher ups. So there's your prototype tip of the day on handling premier museum expensive conversation piece trains, treat them well and they'll stay nice for years to come .

[Chris Pile]

Thanks for posting all the great pix!

[BobPalma]

Great pics and very interesting. Thanks. BP

[JRoberts]

What fun day that must have been (except for your missing Lark, which was disappointing, I know). I have visited that museum and it is a grand place. Lots of very cool stuff and a great car show could only make it better.

[Bill Pressler]

Wow, great pics, I'd love to see the place. I'm reminded of taking the Erie Lackawanna "Lake Cities" train when I was a kid in the '60's. Our town of under 10K had three trains east to NYC and three trains west to Chicago daily, until Jan. 1970. We took it for granted, and then it was gone. Ironically, the town I live in now is (was) on the same Erie Lackawanna mainline as my hometown.

[DEEPNHOCK]

Love that place...
Used to live about 15 miles from there and we used to go over on the days they were 'making steam'.
Fun to go through the sheds...
Lot of history there.. Big history.
GREAT location for a Stude show.
Right close by there is a superb music machine show (Victrola, Edison, music box, etc) that is held once a year.
Sounds like great fun!
Jeff

[53k]

Well another car show at this museum has come and gone. We got the usual primo spot down right by the depot. We also share our place with the Packard club, so the Studebakers and the Packards are usually shown together. There was an unfortunate note as I became a spectator for the first time in more than 10 years as the Lark decided that even thought it would run on the R1 carb we rebuilt, an electrical bug popped up in the Motorola's alternator circuit at the last minute(more like 3 am)to keep the car from charging, to my extreme disappointment Anyway here's some highlights from the day: ...

Thanks for posting the description and pix. I have been curious about this Expo since I bought Avanti R5527. In the console compartment were three buttons from the Expo (see thumbnail). If you could use them, send me your mailing address via Forum message or email and I'll mail them to you. They are of no use to me.
Maybe you would remember the car, an Avanti Gray '64 with Halibrands. It would have been part of the Phil Solheim collection when these pins were collected. Any details you might remember would be very useful to me since Mr. Solheim is gone. For background, the car was sold new at North Park Sales and Service, 1640 North Lasalle Street, Chicago.

[PlainBrownR2]

Thanks for posting the description and pix. I have been curious about this Expo since I bought Avanti R5527. In the console compartment were three buttons from the Expo (see thumbnail). If you could use them, send me your mailing address via Forum message or email and I'll mail them to you. They are of no use to me.
Maybe you would remember the car, an Avanti Gray '64 with Halibrands. It would have been part of the Phil Solheim collection when these pins were collected. Any details you might remember would be very useful to me since Mr. Solheim is gone. For background, the car was sold new at North Park Sales and Service, 1640 North Lasalle Street, Chicago.

The buttons are their version of the dash plaques. When you pass through the gate, they give you a few items, an identification card for the window, and a couple of buttons, as well as tell you to put your already pre-registered letter card(ours is usually "C") so the staff can point you to where you need to go on the grounds.
I have pictures of a gray Avanti from 2002, I don't have anything from 2003. I think there were a couple of years where I had a schedule conflict so I couldn't attend a couple of them, so theres no pictures present. LOL, when you are going to these things year after year, they start to run into each other, so unfortunately I don't remember the Avanti very well. What you'll probably need to do is you may want to speak to some of the older Blackhawk Chapter members on that particular Avanti and the original owner that had it.

[copcars1]

where is this museum located at?

[PlainBrownR2]

Here's the directions for the museum:

(815) 923-4391
7000 Olson Rd
Union, IL

[raprice]

Thanks for the photos. Looks like it was a great show. Nice assortment of vehicles.
Rog

[Jim B PEI]

Wow! I'm putting that museum on my 'must see' list.

[53k]

Your Zephyr pictures bring back fond railroad memories. In 1970 it was announced that the (original) California Zephyr was being discontinued. As we were living in the San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay), I decided to try to ride a portion of the route. All the westbound trips were almost immediately sold out, but I was able to get tickets for us (wife and me plus two kids) on an eastbound run. I couldn't take it all the way to Chicago so I got tickets to Portola, California (near the Nevada border). That would at least take us through the Feather River Canyon, probably the most spectacular part of the trip anyhow. I drove the Wagonaire to Portola, parked it in the depot parking lot and caught a bus back to Oakland. A few days later we boarded the Zephyr in Oakland and headed east. Even the Bay Area departure route was pretty spectacular. We were in Vista Dome cars with great visibility of the scenery. The train went south past Hayward then turned up a canyon (can't remember the name). We started going through tunnels and crossing bridges almost immediately. The route crossed the Altamont pass then dropped in to the Sacramento River plains. We decided to have lunch in that area and that was a great experience too. They kept up the first class service right to the end- linen table cloths and napkins, china, crystal stemware, silver flatware, white gloved waiters, excellent food. On that stretch we met the westbound Zephyr. Of course the highlight was entering the Feather River Canyon where the track clung to the side of the mountains, repeatedly crossed the Feather River and went through a bunch of tunnels. Having to get off at Portola was kind of sad. The ride was so memorable. We drove back down the Feather River Canyon on our return- equally spectacular driving.
There is currently an AMTRAK California Zephyr, but it doesn't travel quite the same route (bypasses the Feather River Canyon). The original California Zephy was a joint route with three different railroads participating- the Burlington from Chicago to Denver, the Denver and Rio Grande Western from Denver to Salt Lake City and the Western Pacific from Salt Lake City to Oakland. The same passenger cars went all the way, just the locomotives changed at each point.