Shop Tour 15: Illinois Railway Museum Steam Locomotive Restoration Shop 

My wife and I stayed at the KOA ~2 miles away, and spent a full day touring the sheds and tracks. I hope to go back for another visit. Best wishes from the far North.

If you are 3 1/2 hours away, I recommend doing a full weekend trip then. It's quite the museum, and usually during summer months they have events happening. Plus the museum is quite large as well. During the summer as well they are open on the weekdays but usually only have 1 electric car running. But this place, with the exception of 1 or 2 people are all volunteers, and this year is the 70th anniversary of the museum, and it keeps going strong. Plus on the weekends they have a small restaurant, not the best food but convenient. They have 5 barns full of trains that are open to the public and another 15 that are closed. I could go on and on, but if you want more info I'm here to help. I live about half an hour and have been going there for about 40 years

@@jamesf791 Lucky you, it sounds fantastic, and right up my alley! I talked to my wife about it yesterday, saying I hoped it was in our future. She said she'd be glad to go, but would make sure to bring a book to read, since she knew I'd by way more into it than she was, and she'd find a quiet place to wait for me. I said I might want to stay for days, and she just said, 'Then I'll bring more than one book'.

@@paulkinzer7661 I completely understand about the wife, my wife is the same, I go by myself a few times a year. Like I said, I suggest a weekend trip, maybe she can get on a commuter train (Metra) to Chicago and go shopping while you go see these trains? On the weekend days there are usually lots of trains running.

@@jamesf791 She's a librarian, and reading books is her go-to choice. Shopping, not so much! I'm going to try to get my son to come, too. He's a 22-year-old engineering student, and we went to several -- much smaller! -- railway museums here in Wisconsin when he was a mite. He recently took a trip to Boston via Amtrak, just because he wanted to travel by train.

@@paulkinzer7661 make it a father-son weekend then.

Well, we use them for anything that needs to be made. Not just steam locomotives, but any other equipment at the museum that requires machined parts. The Electric Car Shop has some smaller machines, but big stuff goes to the Steam Shop.

Look again Saw one Plus 3 other gantry

It's not that there is anything wrong with it, just that Frisco 1630 and Shay 5 were considered higher priorities for work, because of the desire to keep at least one locomotive in steam for each season..

Three or four, depending on level of qualifications.

Check their website

We're an all-volunteer organization. Generally the steam shop works on Saturday, though sometimes people come in on Sunday. Other shops work at other times, some during the week. Mostly just whenever somebody has the time to come by.

One thing I didn't see is a casting/forge area. I'd assume that's what they need, not the machining of it.

@@KeefyKat, I have no idea of the size of something like that but could Windy Hill handle something like that? Just curious.

Brake cylinders of this era were all castings. Did you see any foundry on this tour? Any cupola furnaces, any ladles, any flasks? We were going to grind out the crack and braze it, but decide that wouldn't be the right way to do it, because we are, after all, a passenger-carrying railroad and safety is the top priority. It's rather funny that you call this 'one of the saddest machining videos you've ever seen' because of a single item that has absolutely nothing to do with machining. Yes, it would be easily within our capability to machine a new one, but that would be quite a bit of effort that could be better put into something that we can't simply buy.

@@Hoaxer51 I doubt it, the cylinder body itself is about thirty pounds.