Frank writes...
Sunday was a day for a significant step forward toward getting the 36 back into service. Since we found a couple of broken leaf springs in the trailer truck two years ago, we've been planning to pull that truck so we could replace the springs. Various circumstances, almost all of them surrounding the construction work on Barn 4, pushed back this work.
In the meantime, Brian and Will brought the shop truck - a CTA 4000 motor truck - over to roll under the car. This is where things got a little complicated: it turned out that the center bearing on the shop truck was higher than we wanted, and that meant removing shims from under the shop truck's center bearing. But of course the bolts were rusted, so they needed to be heated (hence the torch set visible in the below photo). This job was done by Jimmy and Will, after which Joel used a large hammer to persuade the shims to detach from the center bearing casting. This all took a little time, but the work progressed steadily. A huge THANK YOU goes out to everyone who helped, including Nick, Greg, Brian, Joel, Jimmy, Will, and Andy.
Once the center bearing on the 4000 truck had been reinstalled minus its shims, the 36 was jacked up a bit to clear the truck's brake rigging. Above, Brian is over to the right "conducting the orchestra" consisting of Nick, running the jack at the left, and Greg, running the jack on the other side of the car. Then, we pushed the truck under the car, lowered the car, dropped in the king pins, and voila.
The car is still at an angle, but that's not a big problem for low-speed switch moves, and we hope it won't be like this for very long anyway. As soon as we have time, we'll remove the bolster keepers from atop the 36's truck, lift off the bolster, and remove the leaf spring packs so we can get the springs replaced. Fingers crossed that before long, we'll have all four of our "serviceable" wood cars cleared for service again.
I was busy with the 36 project the whole day, but in other news, Sunday marked 100 years to the day since the 714 first entered service on the North Shore. Zach and his crew marked the occasion by posting a nice sandwich board up at the depot and running the car along with the 251, which recently had some air compressor wiring work done to return it to revenue operation. It sounded like all went well.
In the evening, it was time to wrap up the winter's work on the 460. Nick, Steven, Brian, and I took the two rebuilt doors over to the car, hoisted them up, and screwed them into place. Thanks to Steven for taking the above photo, showing Nick and yours truly upstairs and Brian downstairs installing the side door. I'd like to do a little more futzing with the train door to get it to seat a bit more comfortably, but the car is now ready for service.
