Those F59PHI's seem to be all over the place.

Today on the Southwest Chief



455 apparently been to Beech Grove for a major overhaul, now heading back west to LA all shiney and clean!!



Of course if 47 is running much it will arrive at LA dirty!!

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Chesterton camera alert!

Word is that a pair of CP steam locomotives, 1238 and 1286, are being moved (on flat cars) from Staunton, WV to Winnipeg via Chicago. Last report was at Enola, PA. I wouldn't be surprised if these loads have a speed restriction, so it could be couple days or more before they get here.

I'll be at the museum tomorrow, so I won't be able to post updates here even if I get them.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

An update on positive Train Control in the US.

Still only a discussion topic in Canada, no dates set, no mandatory requirement.

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Well just a couple of posts down I posted this



The newly overhauled and shiny F59PHI nunber 455 leaving on the Southwest Chief to return to wok in LA.

Unfortunately all did not go as planned and that train minus 455 apparently reached LA 11 hours 29 mins late. The cause apparently 455 which was abandonded in Trinidad CO.

So yesterday on the 4



Marked "return to sender" :-) Looks like there may be a few red faces at Beech Grove.

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Chesterton camera alert!

Word is that a pair of CP steam locomotives, 1238 and 1286, are being moved (on flat cars) from Staunton, WV to Winnipeg via Chicago. Last report was at Enola, PA. I wouldn't be surprised if these loads have a speed restriction, so it could be couple days or more before they get here.

I'll be at the museum tomorrow, so I won't be able to post updates here even if I get them.

Last I heard, they were either still in Conway Yard near Pittsburg or they had somehow made it in record time for a speed-restricted dimensional load all the way to the destination in Winnipeg without anyone seeing them anywhere en route. I have it on good authority that they have been cleared for all weight and size restrictions on Metra-owned trackage that they will need to traverse.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Marked "return to sender" :-) Looks like there may be a few red faces at Beech Grove.

Unless someone points to a bright yellow remove before ... sticker with a wide brimmed grin.

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Marked "return to sender" :-) Looks like there may be a few red faces at Beech Grove.

Unless someone points to a bright yellow remove before ... sticker with a wide brimmed grin.

Actually another explanation I have heard is.

455 was sent out on the 3, powered down and not ready for service as the final checks would be made in LA, however along the way the lead P42 #18 developed problems and the crew didn't think it would make it over Raton Pass. So they powered up 455 to assist, notices an oil leak but carried on none the less and blew it up!!

Of course more questions would come from that scenario, why did a newly overhauled loco have a serious oil leak and did whoever gave the OK to start up 455 know the final checks hadn't been done.

All sounds a bit odd to me.

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This weekend and next, IRM is having its annual Day Out With Thomas event. We make more money from these four days than the whole rest of the season (even after paying 1/3 of the gate to Hit Entertainment).

This year, for the first time, Percy is also visiting. Percy was already on the property, hiding in Barn 4 with his face covered, last Saturday. I gave him a good looking over. In the cab, there are two emergency brake valves, one of which our conductors will use to stop the train at the west end of the line. There is also a great big hand brake wheel. And there are controls for the facial expression system, the audio system, and the fog machine that pumps "smoke" out of the stack. There is also an oval plate that says it was built by the Strasburg Railroad in September, 2014. In the back of the cab there is a generator to run these (and the headlight). Getting into the cab and out again was a tight squeeze for me, and I bumped my head on the ceiling as I left. Thomas was scheduled to arrive this week and could be there now.

After sweating myself nearly to death last year, I declined to be a trainman this year (although I could probably handle conductor on Percy). Instead, I will be the west wye switchtender on both Saturdays. Doing that, I can spend 20 minutes out of every 30 inside the air conditioned diner building.

Thomas, as always, will be pushed by a diesel at the other end of the train for his <1 mile run each way. Percy, however, will have 1630 at the other end and do our standard 10-mile mainline round trip. There will also be four streetcars running around the car line, but the usual mainline electric trains were canceled when Percy was added to the schedule. You will be able to see Percy (but probably not Thomas) on our webcams at http://irm.org.

After these two weekends of hell, so far I'm not on anything for the following weekend, but there are still plenty of positions open. However, we're having the Band Organ Rally, and last year that drove me slightly nuts. For Labor Day weekend, I'm conductor on the CTA 2200s shuttle L train (with air conditioning, if it's needed) om Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday the 13th, I'll be conductor on the coach train. It's diesel that day, and no special events, so it should be fairly quiet. Beyond that, I haven't signed up for anything yet.

The third week of September, we're hosting the ATRRM (not sure of the acronym, but it's a bunch of train museum honchos) convention Thursday through Sunday, combined with our own Members' Showcase Weekend. Showcase is always the last big hurrah of the season for lots of stuff to run that doesn't often. It's the last scheduled days for 1630 and the Zephyr this year.

(Hey, there's something I'd like to see us do, just once: put 1630 on the Zephyr. I'm not sure if I'd want to be on the train or out taking pictures.)

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Here's a nice set of pictures of the Amtrak yard, taken by a truck driver with his cell phone as he went by on Roosevelt Road. (I withhold comment on the safety of that.) There are several shots of 466 and 465 and also 653. You can also see the NS GP38-2 that I may or may not have mentioned previously; it's unusual because its short hood is the same height as the long one, rather than being a low nose that the crew can see over. I'm pretty sure no other class 1 uses any such in mainline service.

I heard Amtrak borrowed that Geep from NS for a work train, for some track work they're doing inside Union Station. Don't know why they didn't bring in one of their own Geeps.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Yawn .....

Here is a real train

London Victoria

Chis that is just so rude I am speechless, OK so you don't happen to like the pictures and information I post here.

Fine, I will endeavor not to bore you anymore with any more of my postings.

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Construction finally started this week on IRM's barns 13 and 14. Blog post with pictures of the footings being drilled and poured.

These will not be open to the public, but they will house a lot of equipment that is rusting and rotting away because it's currently exposed to the weather.

I heard they put off the start for another month or two because McHenry County's construction permit fees actually went down this month, saving us several thousand dollars.

(Not that I think this will be of much interest to anyone but me.)

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Probably for the best, it looks rather ricketty, and those rails surely aren't in a smooth curve.

Do consider the distortion in that photo from the telephoto lens it was obviously taken with makes it appear much worse than it probably was. Those trestle pilings were probably old enough to be old growth timber, and good for another 100 years or so :) But now there'll be pretty murals, right?

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I heard they put off the start for another month or two because McHenry County's construction permit fees actually went down this month, saving us several thousand dollars.

A council's charges going DOWN - that's a very rare, and if true, welcome event. I hope your barn construction goes smoothly and you end up with your much needed storage space

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Here's a fascinating 46 minute video of Chicago's 75th Street Tower in action. It was an "armstrong" tower, meaning all the switches and signals were operated by the towerman throwing levers. Some of them would have been for electric signals, but most were either switches or manual semaphore signals. I won't bother to repeat the history given in the description on the youtube page.

However, to give you some geographical context, I offer this Bing Maps view of the crossing. From there, if you scroll the map west, the BRC crosses the former Grand Trunk Western (now leased by CN to CSX) at Hayford, then angles northwest to reach Clearing Yard. Also to the west, NS/Metra angles southwest to/past Landers Yard, former Wabash, now used by NS for intermodal. Going east, BRC and NS/Metra connect with a series of switches; Metra trains headed downtown have to get across the BRC here to turn northward at 74th St.

Back at the crossing, CSX goes north to its 59th St. intermodal yard and south to Forest Hill Yard, which I get the impression isn't used for much anymore.

For broader history and more geography lessons, I suggest you go to this great page about rail junctions on the south side of Chicago and scroll down to the section about 75th St. - Forest Hill. This may well put more questions in your head, so move on to Pullman Junction, then skip down to the section on the Chicago & Western Indiana / Belt Railway Corridor (or maybe you should read that before Pullman Jct., since a train going east at 75th would traverse this section before reaching Pullman Jct.).

After that, you may want to skip back one page in the site's hierarchy and read up on Hayford and maybe also Dolton (pronounced Dawlt'n). You will also find the other pages on the site interesting, but they have no immediate relevance to this video.

Finally, I should note that Metra recently kicked off an effort to raise funds for a pair of projects in this area. One would elevate the CSX tracks over the others at 75th St. and the other would elevate Metra over the BRC and NS, and over the former C&WI at 74th St., connecting it to the former Rock Island line. Trains would then go into La Salle St. Station downtown instead of Union Station.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

This week's barn update.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Well, Armstrong towers doesn't ring any bells over the pond, but a number of our old mechanical lever signal boxes now have heritage status, and quite rightly too. When I get a minute I will watch your video.

UK Boxes

Yep, same thing. I wish there were still enough of them in the US and Canada to warrant saying "fewer than 500." I also wish more of them were preserved and restored when they're taken out of service. Most are demolished very quickly.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

How much is the Barn costing?

You might think I'd know that, but I don't. I'll see if I can find out tomorrow.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Chesterton camera alert!

Word is that a pair of CP steam locomotives, 1238 and 1286, are being moved (on flat cars) from Staunton, WV to Winnipeg via Chicago. Last report was at Enola, PA. I wouldn't be surprised if these loads have a speed restriction, so it could be couple days or more before they get here.

I'll be at the museum tomorrow, so I won't be able to post updates here even if I get them.

Last I heard, they were either still in Conway Yard near Pittsburg or they had somehow made it in record time for a speed-restricted dimensional load all the way to the destination in Winnipeg without anyone seeing them anywhere en route. I have it on good authority that they have been cleared for all weight and size restrictions on Metra-owned trackage that they will need to traverse.

Latest word is they departed Conway Thursday night and got as far as Motor Yard near Cleveland. No one saw them during the day, but they could be hidden behind stack trains. Just have to wait and when they move again. I'll be at the museum and unable to monitor postings.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

AMTK 654 is on train 6 today. Currently about an hour late out of Ottumwa. If it stays like that, it should go by the MH camera by shortly after 3pm CDT.

The Facebook thread I was following for the CP steam locos jumped the shark of sarcastic intolerance of unjustly inferred stupidity and is no longer a source of info. I'll see if I can find it elsewhere.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

My Day Out With Thomas went about as I expected it to. At about 25 and 55 minutes past each hour, the Thomas conductor would call the dispatcher for orders. The dispatcher would tell him that at :00 or :30 (as the case was), Thomas was authorized to depart, go through the west wye to Jefferson St., return to the west wye and call for orders. The conductor would repeat it back and the dispatcher would say "that is correct." Then the Thomas Helper (i.e., the engineer in the diesel at the other end of the train) would repeat it back and the conductor would say "that is correct." That was my cue to get off my butt and go throw the switch (after looking down the track to make sure the dispatcher had put out the orange cone to stop the streetcars) so that Thomas would go down the west wye. Then, per the rules, I would walk 15-20 feet away from the switch. As the diesel passed, I would follow it back toward the switch and throw the switch back, then go back to my chair or the diner or wherever I felt like going (making sure I didn't cross the track in front of a streetcar).

It was hot and humid. Our weather station recorded a high of 93F, and I think the dew point was around 68. In mid-afternoon, a light thunderstorm came through that brought the temperature down to 75F, but it went back to at least 83 when the sun came out again, and then what little wind there was died off. I managed to keep adequately, if not properly, hydrated. Stepping into the diner or office a few times helped. It's supposed to be only low 80s next weekend.

Thomas has minimal facial animation: his eyes periodically move from looking forward and down to left and down, and his mouth opens and closes. Percy is more advanced: he plays recorded messages and his lips move in sync with his words. I'm not sure what his eyes do; I didn't see enough of him. The conductor of Percy found that the emergency brake valve was not very effective for making controlled stops, and after the first couple of trips the engine crew handled almost all of the braking. I think the same happened with Thomas. Percy's conductor had to get an assistant to run the audio system because it's mounted on the right side of the cab and he was using the valve on the left so he could see the platform.

The dispatcher told the 1630/Percy crew that they had the railroad from the depot east until 6pm, so he did not have to issue them orders each time. I'm not sure how far Percy was going, but it was also running on 30 minute headways, on the 15s and 45s.

Now that I know how easy it is to be conductor of Thomas and Percy, maybe I'll do one of them next year. But, as switchtender I can go find AC if I need to. Have to think about that.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.