Saturday, February 4, 2012

Socket To Me

The third of the four control jumper sockets was installed today, and this one went quicker than the others. To the left you can see the armored cable bending into the junction box.

It passes through holes in both of the center sills, as seen here.

After all of the wires were connected, I tested it with the light box. There should be no further reason to access this junction box, so I installed the cover.


The bottom cover is a heavy piece of cast iron covered with a piece of thick rubber. I painted it with Glyptol and bolted the cover in place. For the final socket, I need some more parts which Rod will help look for. But it's nice to have the job mostly finished.

I also did some more testing on the control circuits, which went well. The compressor armature was meggered and appeared to be grounded, but a cold, damp day is probably not the best time to do this test. I'll try putting a light bulb inside the compressor for a few weeks and see if that makes a difference. Otherwise, we may have to find a replacement D3-EG. Let's hope not!

And then I started stripping paint from the #2 end, as seen here.

I noticed that one of the carriage bolts holding the retriever bracket was badly rusted. So here we have a before and after picture. As suggested by Bob Kutella, I sand-blasted the rusty bolt (L), wire- wheeled it, and polished it up, and look! (R) It's as good as new!

I apologize if these posts are getting a little repetitious. Frank and David just haven't been posting much lately. I don't know what the problem is. They seem to have forgotten that the annual performance reviews are coming up soon. And why should I hand out raises to slackers?

5 comments:

David Church said...

What color scheme is planned for 36?


David Church

Randall Hicks said...

Glad you asked that question. We do not want to try rebuilding the car, so we can go no further back than the 1946 rebuilding. That leaves us with two options: blue and red. The blue paint scheme I can do myself, so it will match the 308 and 309. The later red paint scheme would also be possible, but we would want to hire a contractor so it matches the 319, and that would require a few thousand dollars. So right now I'm planning to paint it blue.

But money talks, of course.

Anonymous said...

All things considered, blue sounds great. I remember seeing many. Cars in service in the blue and I have to say they were pretty grungy by then and it did not look good. These cars in the fresh early American look really great. So 36 should look great as well.

Cannot get over how much just a few folks such yourself have accomplished!

David Church

Anonymous said...

What about swapping places with the 451 in the diesel shop and asking Jamie and crew if they'll help paint it, whatever the color?

Frank Hicks said...

Good question. The answer I'd give is that having something painted in Barn 2 is not "free." Jamie and the Diesel Dept have been extremely generous with their time and resources in painting several electric cars, but doing this takes their time away from working on the museum's diesel fleet. It may also take time away from painting other electric cars that are in the pipeline. If we can paint the 36 ourselves in the color scheme we want (and we can), then all the better. Just my two cents.