Hi,

I noticed that I have had the Heyworth Railroad Museum's Facebook link as my signature, but since we are a relatively new operation and not a lot of people know about us, I thought I would take this time to tell you all a little about who we are.

The Heyworth, IL Railroad Museum was established a couple years ago after Heyworth resident Gus Miller purchased an Illinois Central Iowa Division side door caboose to be displayed on the abandoned IC Gruber Line through Heyworth. Acquired from the Monticello Railway Museum, caboose number 9880 arrived at Heyworth in 2005 and was repainted from fading Illinois Central Gulf orange into the original red and white paint scheme of the IC. No. 9880 was originally built as a gondola car, but was rebuilt into a caboose in 1941.

A few years later, Gus got together with some local history and railroad fans and created the Heyworth Railroad Museum, which was to be based out of the caboose. However, at the time, the 9880 was used for storage by Gus and had become a problem with the City of Heyworth, and by 2010 the caboose faced possible eviction and scrapping.

The museum board was organized and began working with the city to ensure the caboose's home in Heyworth would be permanent. The interior of the caboose was restored and turned into a welcoming museum, with several displays representing the railroad's importance to Heyworth and the rest of the United States.

Today, number 9880 is looking better than ever, and is opened several times a year by museum members for open houses, and for an annual Polar Express event around the holidays.

For those of you interested in checking out our museum, we will have the caboose open to the public on Sunday, September 23rd, from 12:30-6:30 PM for the "Market on Main" event in Heyworth. We would love to see fellow rail preservationists come by to chat and share knowledge! You can find out more about this event and other upcoming events on our Facebook page, listed in my signature.

Thanks for your interest,
Thomas

Thomas -

The IC caboose looks pretty good. I have a few color photos of steam power hanging in my "computer room". One of these is of Illinois Central 2-8-2 # 2106 pounding southbound through Heyworth on a long freight. When I originally purchased the photo, the seller "cropped it" to make the Mikado a bit larger, but I had to request another copy of the photo uncropped, so that the whole scene could be included. Only the last two letters of the Heyworth station sign show behind the Mike, but the train order board is visible over the sand dome. The first car behind the tender is obviously a double door round top Pennsylvania boxcar. The second car is a "normal" 40' steel boxcar with a herald over the reporting marks and car number, but I can't make out the railroad. Then comes a flat car, then a couple of hoppers, then more boxcars. Well you get the idea. A typical steam era mixed freight on the Gruber.

Les

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Good on you. Maybe you could market yourselves as (arguably) the world's smallest railroad museum!
Cheers, Bob
Canberra Railway Museum (In deference to Robert J).

Bob - Appreciate your mentioning the organization you are involved with but I realize what I was trying to explain in my 'complaint' above may not be so clear. In your case you were just posting a word of encouragement so knowing you were from Canberra Railway Museum was not as needed in this particular thread. Thanks for reading what I wrote and taking my opinion into consideration - Cheers!

When something specific is being discussed like rust repair, brake work or paint systems it would be helpful to know the who/where when someone chimes in with advice. This way the rest of us would know if what was being said applies to say a steam locomotive, painting aluminum or adjusting brakes as some examples.

Changing a brake shoe on a 4-8-4 driver, GP9 diesel or PCC streetcar I'm sure has portions of the procedure in common but other portions are undoubtedly specific to a certain design and/or era. Tricks that work in one application may not cross over to another so it's nice to know the what. I'm sure for those of you who do this stuff on a routine basis such things are second nature but to those of us not doing the work it isn't obvious. I just like to be able to understand things better not to mention knowing what is considered the proper or effective way of performing a task.