Trip Down South to Find PCC Parts

 Steve Iversen has been hard at work, going far to find parts for IRM PCC's.  

Shaker Heights 81 is a PCC in poor condition, privately owned near Dover, Ark.  But the owner has allowed us to acquire parts we need, and Steve went there recently.  He reports:

Today I got just about everything I think I can get off the Shaker Heights 81 by myself.  I removed both front and rear windows, since they are identical to the ones on the 4391, so now we have spares!  I removed the trolley pole and base along with the Ohio Brass retriever.  I also removed the battery tray, marker lights, and dash lights.  The battery tray and light sockets are needed for the Kansas City 755.

I wasn't able to get the MG set off because I don't have a fork or skid loader.  The Little Rock Birney is in the way.  The owner of the property is working on getting a crane so that we can lift the car off its trucks.  Most likely this will not happen until January.  I'll bring everything except the trolley pole and base up to the Museum sometime next month.

It's great that we are able to get parts we need, and that we have someone who is able and willing to go the distance to get them.  You too can help, from the comfort of home!  Donations are needed now to the KCPS 755 fund.

The Fix Is In

Walkover seat replacement is a complicated process, and the parts are heavy.  But I needed the exercise.

For the seat that we saw last time, which had been removed, the first step was to separate the back from the frame.  The back, like all of them in the main compartment, was professionally recovered many years ago, and they're all in excellent condition.  So I carried the seat out to the platform, removed the back, and carried the heavy cast-iron frame out of the car and to the ground.  Then I brought a replacement frame (originally from car 300) from storage to the 309, and put it more or less in place as seen here.  It's several inches into the aisle.  Then I managed to fit the back between the levers.  It's easier to insert and tighten the screws on the inside end of the back when there's more room between the seat and the wall.

Then the frame was moved into place, and carefully attached to the wall and the aisle bracket.

Finally, the arm rest was attached with a dozen screws, and the cushion put into place.  With some lubrication, it moves back and forth just the way it should.  Then I sat down to test it.  Whew!

And you know this has to be the same seat because the L7 hasn't moved.  I believe I have just three more to do in the 309, and several months to do it.

Meanwhile, back in Barn 4, the 306 team were hard at work.  Here Steve Keller and Fred are checking the electrical connections to the controller.

They also checked the alignment of the various parts of the pilot.  Here we see Gerry checking part of it; not shown are John and the others.

The Pennsy tool car looks great, at least the exterior does.

In the distance we see the 1268 and the 65.

Tim continued working on the 1268; these are seat cushions he assembled today.

He's usually moving too fast to be captured on camera.

Tuesday News Bulletins

One of my tasks on Tuesday was to come up with a better way of blocking the side doors on the 460 when it's on display in the barn.  The short pieces of 2x4 we were using weren't very effective, and tended to get lost or used as chocks.  This is the sort of thing I enjoy doing, so here's the solution.

I'll be making some for each of the St. Louis cars.  Patent pending.

The bigger project involves fixing walkover seats in the 309.  One of the frames just couldn't be made to work, so I removed it and a frame in good condition will be replacing it  -- one from car 300 that we got from our friends at North Freedom several years ago.  Just getting the seat back detached from the frame was a difficult task.

Meanwhile, the 306 team are continuing their work on the Fox River car.  The interior is looking better and better.

Next, in Illinois Terminal news...

Steve Smunt and Jim continued their work on restoring windows for the 101.

Finally, in neighborhood improvement news, the old window container sitting out in the yard has been condemned by the authorities, so it was necessary to move all the windows into Barn 4 extension for storage.  Tim Peters deserves a lot of credit for taking on this thankless task.  I wasn't able to get a good picture of him running the forklift to do this, but be sure to give him a round of applause!

Doodlebug October Report

Many thanks to our indefatigable staff reporter Gregg Wolfersheim, who has sent along an update of recent progress on Union Pacific M-35, the museum's EMC doodlebug.

We left our readers with a shot of the inner vestibule door in primer, last month. Soon after, the coach side was refurbished and ended up with a coat of varnish.

Here it is back on its hinges. The other side got painted in the tan, of course.

With the recreation of the right door, the hinges for the door side are missing, as was the original door. I sourced some modern day hinges that were pretty close, but a bit too wide. I cut off the excess, and then added 3 mounting holes. The original doorjamb halves were used for a reference. Here is a comparison of the two.

Here is the new door being fitted to the opening. Jack created this duplicate by using the left door as a model. It was quite a battle on Thursday trying to get this to fit. The doorway is almost a half inch narrower at the bottom, compared to the top. So much for building a perfectly square door and hoping it will just go in! A little more tweaking will have it working soon. Then it can get primed and painted.

Slotting the Comm

Frank writes...

Sunday was one of those days that consisted of one task that took the entire time.

The task at hand was "slotting the commutator" on the 18's National BB2 air compressor. The comm is made up of copper segments with mica insulation between them. The mica insulators are supposed to be lower than the segments, so to speak, but depending on wear and maintenance, you can get to a situation where the comm surface is basically smooth, with the mica at the same level as the segments. That's not good, as it can cause excessive wear and sparking, but that's what the 18's air compressor has had. So, my job was to go around the comm and use a cut-off hacksaw blade to "slot" it - i.e., cut down the mica insulating pieces and create shallow slots between the segments. In the above photo, the segments right of center have been done, while the ones left of center haven't. Unlike with a traction motor that's attached to a car, this comm can easily be turned by hand to advance to the next segment.

I spent the whole afternoon working on this, which was tedious, but not especially unpleasant. The weather for the museum's last regular-season open day of the year was gorgeous, so for a while I had the garage door at the west end of the lean-three open for some fresh air and light. This commutator work is (we hope!) the most laborious of the improvement tasks we have planned for the 18's air compressor, but I got through maybe 70% of the work, so I hope to finish it the next time I'm out. Thanks go to Richard, for guidance with this, and to Steven, who drained the last of the old oil out of the pump and also worked on sourcing new wire terminals that will be needed.

EDIT: Thanks to Brian L for sending this photo of yours truly in action. It's just as much fun as it looks!

Further east in the shop, we were invaded by several Steam Department volunteers, who were cutting boards for a new deck for the tender on Commonwealth Edison 5. Here, Matthew and Mike retrieve boards from the pile.

And our team of Brian Sawyers - Brian D on the left and Brian L on the right - work at the radial arm saw to cut the boards to length. When they were done, the wood was picked back up by the forklift and returned to the Steam Shop for painting.

Speaking of ComEd locomotives, ComEd 4 was on the inspection pit, as shown here. Unfortunately, it's temporarily out of service.

Here's the reason: a brake beam was found to be cracked at the end, just outboard of the bushing. This will be replaced.

When Brian L wasn't working with the steam guys to cut boards, he was working on air valves. Here's a nice, newly overhauled M15B motorman's valve body. When he finishes fixing up its innards, he'll give it to us for blue paint, and then it can go onto the 309 to replace a valve that's been causing some issues. Thanks, Brian!

Finally, not necessarily big news, but when I was driving onto the property, our Muni trolley bus was sitting outside the Andersen Garage in good sunlight, so I snapped a photo. This Fageol-Twin Coach trolley bus was built in 1949 and I believe it's the last of its type.

Dayton & Western Preservation

The Dayton & Western was an important interurban company, which provided the most direct route between Indianapolis and Ohio.  Only one car from this line has survived, however, and that's because it was made into a house.  This particular car was built by Barney & Smith in 1903 as a motor.  In 1922 it was rebuilt into a trailer, and operated until 1932, when the body was sold off. 

Art Peterson has provided some interesting photos of the car.  These were taken about 1967 by Donald L. Carr, while the body was being used as a house near Troy, O.  As always, these images are copyright by the Krambles-Peterson Archive, no reproduction without permission, etc.

Reminds me of Lake Shafer!

About 2005 the body was rescued by a local group called "Friends of Dayton and Western 602" and has been cosmetically restored and put on display at Carillon Historical Park in Dayton.  And it appears to be in use as a café at the park.

Of course, information about the current status of this car is on PNAERC here, including recent pictures.  I notice it's sitting on L car trucks -- did they get those from IRM?

Visit to Mid-Continent

Over the weekend, it was time for another visit to the car shop of the Mid-Continent Railway Museum  in North Freedom.  My old friend Bill Buhrmaster gave us a nice guided tour.  And these are just three of the current projects.

LS&I 64

The crew at North Freedom are making noteworthy progress on the LS&I Hicks car.  The roof has been finished, and from the ground it looks great.  But the scaffold has been removed, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  In any case, you can follow some of the developments on this car over the years by looking at the Trip Reports for Wisconsin.

Bill pointed out something I'd never noticed before: one of the iron platform railings has a slot, which is visible here:

Bill advanced the theory that this slot is for the uncoupling lever of a Miller Hook coupler!  But why?  A car built in 1910 would never have had such a thing.  Evidently the Hicks company would salvage parts when they rebuilt or scrapped older passenger cars, and store them for later use.  So this railing could possibly date back to the 1870's or so.  He also pointed out that the pedestals on the trucks are similar in size and shape, but they all have different names cast into them, and so the trucks were assembled from whatever spare parts happened to be lying around.  I didn't bother to start taking pictures of the different pedestals.

But a complete restoration of the interior is well underway.   

A lot of the woodwork needs to be reproduced.  Much of it has rotted away over the years.

Finally, they have recreated one of the original F.M. Hicks company seats -- double lever flipovers -- from original drawings and surviving parts, since most of them were replaced long ago in the car's history.  It looks great and works perfectly.  Now they just have to produce a car's worth.

DULUTH

This is a wooden sleeper built by Barney & Smith in 1902.  For over 80 years, though, it served as a summer cottage and is now being slowly restored.  One section was retained more or less intact, while the others were demolished, so at least they have a pattern for rebuilding the rest of the interior.

EJ&S 2

The East Jordan & Southern #2 is one of the oldest passenger cars in existence in the US, having been built originally in 1864 by Osgood Bradley.  Its restoration is now complete.  It's on display, and Bill sent me these official before and after pictures.

In the early days at North Freedom, this car was often used in revenue service.

To me, the interesting thing here is that under the piles of parts you can clearly see the CA&E walkover seats from car 300.  They certainly weren't authentic, so they were sold to IRM several years ago and are used to repair and replace seats in the 308 and 309.

The interior has been completely rebuilt.  The ceiling patterns are painted on canvas attached to the ceiling.  New seats were manufactured.

Tuesday Brief

I spent all day working on getting walkover seats in the 309 to change direction properly, with some success.  But the functional ones don't look much different than they did before, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  Several other Car Dept. projects were going along, however, and they may be more photogenic.

Here Steve Smunt is working on windows from the 101 that he brought over to the car shop.  Some of them are going to need some rebuilding. 

Among other projects, the 306 team continues working.  It looks like the pilot for the west end of the car is pretty much finished and ready to be attached.

Here we see John working on wiring in the west vestibule.

Finally, some of the paving in Barn 7 is being jackhammered to pieces.  I suppose I could have taken some video, but it would be more noise than anything else.  Anyway, B&G never stops.

Decompressorization

Frank writes…

When I arrived at IRM on Sunday afternoon, the guys had already completed my planned task for the day, switching the 319 and 308 over to Barn 6. This was done so that they can be strung with lights for Happy Holiday Railway, while the 431 and 460 - which may see use during the event - are in Barn 8 and available for service. So what else is there to do? Oh, that’s right!

The biggest reliability issue we've had with Shaker Heights 18 is that its air compressor isn't happy when it's cold - like, when it's cooler than maybe 50 degrees. It has had minor flashovers a couple of times, fortunately with little to no damage done. But we decided to remove it from the car for a thorough going-over, which it hasn't had since the car arrived at IRM. Mikey, Brian, Jimmy, and Will all helped throughout this project. Above, after moving the 1374 out of the way, we've brought the 18 over to the Central Avenue crossing.

Mikey did the really unpleasant work of crawling under this (very low-to-the-ground) car to disconnect the air and electric connections as well as the inboard hanger. That's the air compressor to the right and the rear truck to the left.

It took some deft maneuvering by Brian, our expert forklift driver, but here's the air compressor out from under the car! Apologies to the crew (here, Jimmy, Brian, and Mikey) for making you guys look directly into the sun for this shot...

Thanks also go to Richard and Joel, who helped hoist the pump onto a pallet for transportation back to the car shop "lean-three." Above, Brian is running the forklift as Mikey looks on. This is a National BB2, by the way, and it's the only one of the type we have. After we got the pump back, we drained the oil for replacement and checked out the motor on the pump. Richard and Joel helped with draining the oil, while Steven fixed a bent access door latch. I was able to check the bottle valves, which looked okay. The consensus seems to be that with a little bit of work, there's a good chance this pump will be much happier.

So that's the news from Kingsbury Run Shop. But the more important forklift job happened on Saturday, and our intrepid field photographer Bill Wulfert was there to capture the action on film!

The 65, which came over to Barn 4 last week, was lifted so that one of its trucks could be removed for some wheel work. Above, the front end of the car has been lifted.

Here's the truck with a motor being extracted while Jimmy looks on.

Further along in the process, the truck has been disassembled, and here's the frame.

And here are the two motors out of the 65 truck. The previous four photos were by Bill Wulfert.

Fast-forward to Sunday, and I snapped this shot of the 65 sitting back on its haunches. The shop truck being used is historic in its own right: it’s one of a pair of Gilbert trucks IRM owns that originally came from Intramural Railway elevated cars built for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the world's first electrified elevated rapid transit line if memory serves.

And finally, no news here - I just randomly snapped this shot after the sun had gone down, showing the "cowcatcher lineup" at the front of Barn 6.