Steam, Passenger, Freight, Diesel and Electric equipment will be, hopefully, moving into Barn 14 when built over yard 14. This prominent American railway museum is announcing a fund raiser for the next 60x500 4 track storage barn! Among the equipment needing inside storage are the badly deteriorating wood, freight, passenger, and electric. Here 's a sample of some equipment that might occupy new storage on the property. BM Wood cafe-coach 1094; C&O 2707, 2-8-4; CNW SD40-2, 6847; B&O Wagontop boxcar #374065; 4 CA&E electric interurbans 36,: 319 ; R I 938, 4-6-2; CN sleeper, Ingramport; CNW wood caboose 10494: ATSF, wood caboose, 1400; CB&Q 3007 4-6-4 Hudson; CNW bilevel #1 CA&E steel #451;CNW 4103 wood coach: MNS centercab diesel #21; MIL Rd, obs, Lake City and X38, CGW snowplow. This just a sample of equipment possiblities for inside storage. MOST IMPORTANT in this plan is you the reader of this forum!! To make this dream possible we need your help!! Please send your tax-deductable donations for any or all of these worthy pieces to the: Illinois Railway Museum PO Box 427 Union Ill 60180 If you don't have a favorite [ I have left some pieces out ] just send your donation to: Barn 14 inside storage fund! Telephone # 815-923-4391 Donations can also be made online at Irm .org. O, Yes, watch for information concerning our 60th anniversary coming in 2013!!! Some exciting events are planned. Thanks Roger Kramer

While I think this is a great project, I would like to ask why the proposed building is limited to 60' in width? Is there a reason you can not go wider? The narrow storage buildings of the IRM campus are considerably less efficient than if you were able to build storage barns that could hold six or more tracks instead of four. A building with 6 tracks will cover more track for less money and will ultimately require less site area than the four track buildings because you will need less fire truck access.

The other 13 barns are 60' x 500'...you want them to change the design now?? ;-)

SH

Basically IRM’s county has implemented more restrictive building codes over the last few years.
Without sprinklers the size and distance to other structures is restricted.
MRHA and IRM have also asked for additional donations to start the Milwaukee Road barn, that fund already has about what was quoted for a new barn 7 or so years ago, but short of what is needed now.

500 feet x 4 tracks, 2000 track feet per barn, times 13 barns. So, that's 4.9 MILES of track under cover???? Wow.

Howard P.

Well, not quite. There's no Barn 1, Barn 5, Barn 12 or Barn 13, and Barns 4 and 10 are significantly smaller than the others - Barn 4 is 3 tracks by about 250' and Barn 10 is (IIRC) 4 tracks by about 200'. Altogether I think IRM currently has roughly 2.5 miles of track under cover. Still a "wow" number, though, I'd say!

At 60' x 500', that's 30,000 square feet. The price per foot is $215 per foot. My math says $6.45 million. I sure hope somebody misplaced a digit somewhere. Most pole buildings I've seen are $25 per foot and new home construction is around $100 per foot.

Herb:
IRM, according to the appeal I read, is figuring $215 per linear foot of track space, not square foot of building space. This comes out to $430,000 for the building, or slightly over $14 per square foot. Seems reasonable, considering that the track is aready in place, and that it is basic shelter without insulation, a finished floor, sprinklers, and with minimal lighting.

That sounds much more in the ballpark! Thanks for the update.

IRM is an amazing place. Here's an aerial view from 2009...
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3326/3557 ... 6da2_b.jpg

Nice shot, it even has CNW 8646 & 8701, if you know where to look.

Jeff

Folks, install Google Earth. It has a "tape measure" function which is both useful and accurate. I have analyzed every carbarn in North America with that tool. It also does multisegment lines, so you can get accurate length of railroads within a few feet, also elevations.

Honestly, how can anyone be a railfan without it?

I used to have Frank's "2.5 mile" number much more accurate than that, but, oh, I put that in a Perl script for number crunching, can't find -- oh here it is, in ~/bin/ where it belongs.

Well, you know, Herb is in California, probably why he didn't blink an eye at $215/sq.ft. :) Seriously CSRM probably paid that for their digs.

WRM paid $68/sq.ft. for CH3, or $1143 per track foot, however that was burdened by the cost of the water tank, pumphouse and water mains, which accounts for about 40% of the project, along with building it during the height of the housing-construction bubble.

This much for sure: 2000 more feet of indoor storage will put a significant fraction of the remaining exposed IRM fleet under cover. Again if you want to know how much --- google earth FTW.

Actually, Herb is in Wisconsin :>) and just about choked on $215 a square foot. We put up a car shed at about $10 a square foot 10 years ago and just built a pole shed with concrete pad at $15 a square foot.

Herb Sakalaucks
Colfax RR Museum
Colfax, Wisconsin

For those of you playing along at home, the indoor track space at IRM would be equal to about 2.5 trips around their streetcar loop, all under cover.