For those of you bored at work, today would be a good day to keep an eye on the Illinois Railway Museum's webcams at http://www.irm.org. It's a "Day Out With Thomas" day, the only weekday IRM runs DOWT, so there will be a lot happening on both the main line and the streetcar line (and you can keep track of the main line traffic on the CTC board webcam!).

Heyyyy, that's cool....I sat there watching the damn thing for more than 20 mintues, and there wasn't more than 2 minutes between movements of some sort when you watch the 3 cams. Saw thomas and it looked like they were using one of the BN F units for power on the other end. Definitly going to try to get there next year.

Having just pulled myself away, I have to agree,,, it's a fascinating show.I personally have always avoided the Thomas Days at IRM, after nearly having been trampeled to death (quite literally) at a similar event at the Monticello RR museum 6-7 years ago. I've always known that events like this can generate large revenues and exposure for the sponsoring sites, but viewing these webcams really puts it into perspective.Here it is, a weekday (admittedly a Friday, but still), high temp/humidity combination (85 degrees and other than storage buildings, IRM isn't known for it's abundant shade),,, and it's a pretty full house.In about 10 minutes of watching, I saw a coach train (3-4 cars) pulled by an SP diesel (GP-9 or 7 ?), CSL streetcar 3142, a Chicago PCC streetcar, one of the Illinois Terminal lightweight interurbans, a 2-car North Shore train, as well as Thomas, pulling 5-6 fairly full cars of happy looking passengers (with some BN E-unit help) That's a lot of action even on a weekend, to see it on a weekday was something of an eye-opener.Another example of the fine work that IRM is known for.PS - TO all involved with the new pavilion project, it's a bit hard to make out with the webcam, unless you know what you're looking at,, but it looks good !

Thanks, John, on the pavillion kudos. I was not in charge but I bet I handled at least 4000 of those paving bricks. For those not knowing the rest of the story, in a matter of months, IRM demolished the old 'hot dog stand' (obsolete and in disrepair), adaptively reused two bridge supports salvaged from Montrose Ave in Chicago, and created a new shelter/pavillion on that site. The paving bricks were wisely salvaged years ago from a MILW ROAD platform at Davis Jct., IL.Back to DOWT - if you missed the webcam activity for today, tune in each of the next two weekends. It is a juggling act, but we manage to operate about 8 trains on three different routes during this event. When these five days are done this year we will have provided an estimated HALF MILLION passenger miles of service in that short time.Bob Kutella