Motion Everywhere

Frank writes...

Sunday wasn't just the second day of Bunny Trolley Hop, it was a day of movement, including after the event ended.

What I spent a good part of my afternoon moving was third rail beams. The quartet of beams built by my father over the winter were taken over to Barn 8 for installation on the 460. Above is the one at the current northwest corner of the car...

...and here's the one at the northeast corner. A huge THANK YOU goes out to Greg and Good Nick, who helped install the beams. We also got the beam at the southwest corner of the car installed, but the fourth had fouled bolt holes, so that was left for remedial drilling and later installation. I strongly suspect the 460 hasn't worn third rail beams since 1962, so it's really nice to see these on the car again.

Another thing that got moved was the 453's coupler! Dan F dropped the coupler off the west end of the car and hauled it away, as shown here surrounded by the blocking used to ease it down off the car. Yours truly helped. This coupler is missing a few parts, but we have a plan to address this so that the 453 can be run in train service in the future.

And I finally remembered to test fit that 3D-printed height-adjustment plate template by trying to bolt it both to a truck frame and to one of our newly made third rail beams. I'm happy to say that it fit both perfectly, though I'll need to swap the hole positions left to right. The next step will be to send the 3D file to a couple of area foundries and fabricators to get quotes. That's the easy part - the hard part will be paying for it! And in other news, I got some more needle-chipping done on the ceiling in the 451, though it wasn't especially photogenic.

So, what else was happening? When I arrived, Norm, Jon, Dan and Jimmy (the latter two pictured here) were working on Michigan Electric 28. The 28 sits atop the trucks from long-gone North Shore combine 250, but the North Shore set the side bearings on its trucks further out from the car's center-line than was typical. Norm speculates that this may have been to reduce swaying on the 'L.' Anyway, Norm moved the side bearings on the front truck inward many years go to match the bearing plates on the car itself, but the rear truck never had this done. Until now!

Dan headed up the work to use the mag drill to drill new holes in the center bearing support brackets, then he and Greg (shown here on the left) bolted the side bearings into place in the new, correct location. The truck was then moved back under the 28 and the car was set back down, this time with all four side bearings correctly aligned.

You'll see more about this below, but Kansas City PCC 755 has shown up in Barn 4, and here we see Steve lying down on the job as he examines the steel work that will be needed at the right rear corner of the car.

Brian was hard at work on air brake stuff, as usual. Above is a completely rebuilt air gauge for the 306 that he just completed.

As part of his project to rebuild several S governors at once, he's had to fabricate a missing retainer clip for the internal filter on one governor. Above is how they're supposed to look.

And here's the replacement on the left with the original on the right. Both of those photos were taken by Brian LaKemper. In other shop news, Joel and Jimmy completed the inspection of Veracruz 19 and Joel was up to various other things, including moving spare parts out of the west end of Barn 4 and distributing first aid kits to the operating fleet.

And now, it's time for our ever-popular series, Switching Roundup! With the vast amount of equipment that is being moved around as part of the Barn 15 project, IRM is really living up to its "Museum in Motion" tagline. We start with an update from Saturday. The below photos were taken and submitted by our redoubtable roving reporter, Bill Wulfert.

Kansas City PCC 755 is the subject of a long-running restoration project, but only now is it being brought over to Barn 4 so that the crew has readier access to tools. Above, the car is seen on the tail track.

And here it is on Station Track 1 as part of a wye move. I don't think it's been to the depot since I painted the car in KCPS colors about 25 years ago, and for all I know, it's never been through the depot. As for my corn-broom paint job, I'm pleased to say that its mediocrity has held up nicely, and the quality is just as middling now as it was when the paint was fresh.

The switch crew extracted the Cleveland PCC from track 42.

The lettering and striping on this car isn't 100% done, but it's close.

And back into Barn 4 it went, but this time on track 43 instead of 42.

That opened up a new spot for the 755. Here, the diesel has run around the car and is pushing it down the west leg of the wye.

Next stop, Central Avenue! One of these years, the 755 will hopefully be calling at this same spot, but under its own power and full of passengers.

And into the work barn it goes.

Here's a very happy Steve next to the car.

The front of Barn 4 is now far too modern for my tastes, between two PCCs and a pair of Budd 'L' cars, but what can you do?

With that, let us progress to Sunday. Although I was on the property, I was busy messing around with third rail beams and couplers and neglected to get any photos of the fun. The focus for the day was extracting the AEM7 from the west end of track 52. The AEM7 was the recipient of enough donations to purchase it indoor storage space, so it's going into Barn 15.

Here's an unusual sight, courtesy of Brian LaKemper: a train of lightweight passenger cars in Yard 6.

This photo by Jeron Glander shows track 52 completely emptied out.

And the final result, in a photo by Brian LaKemper, has a pair of IC Highliners at the west end of track 52 in the spot formerly occupied by the AEM7. All four Highliners are lined up on this track, in fact, with the two most recently operational ones to the east, where they can more easily be extracted.

Movie Review

Two thumbs up for "Off His Trolley": https://ia801601.us.archive.org/25/item ... LEY.ia.mp4This is a very educational guide from 1924 on how not to operate streetcars, disguised as a Mack Sennett comedy, and recently restored.  They just don't make them like they used to.

Saturday in the Shop

On Saturday I was running the 714 and 749 for the Bunny Hop event.  Derek White was the conductor and we were the only mainline train.  Basically everything went well, and I was too busy to get any pictures.  But you've all seen the North Shore cars before.  Whether attendance for the event met expectations I couldn't say; our passengers all seemed to be in a good mood.

But during a brief lunch break I managed to get a few pictures of the projects in the shop.

Frank K. is making new sign frames for 50th Avenue.  They look great.

Buzz was carefully painting the new door for the Ely.

Bill showed me the parts we have for the roll sign mechanisms from the CA&E St. Louis cars.  More on that later.

The signal department got evicted from the office building, as we have explained, so here Mike Alterio and John Naglich were working on some signal parts in the car shop.  They were busy, so I didn't stop to ask them exactly what it was.

Steve continued fighting the recalcitrant PCC brake actuators.  He too was busy.

I didn't even have time to venture into the barn to see what was going on there.

And later, just as I was leaving the property, another huge and photogenic switch move started.  But I was too hungry to stay around.  Sorry!!

Green Bay 109 Update

Our indefatigable investigative reporter, Gregg Wolfersheim, is back at it, relaying news about progress on the Green Bay car. I think we can all agree that at this point, thanks to the amount of time it's spent in the Electric Car Shop, it's really an electric car. That's how that works, right?

Here we see Jack putting the trim over the North side of the 109. Last week he did the south side. Each piece had to be custom fitted to the side and existing vertical trim, this took all day!

Inside, the hanging kerosene light fixture is finally up. We located some fonts which are of two different styles.

And, we now have heat at the east end of the car. We still need to apply a sheet metal heat deflector behind both stoves and then reinstall the guard rails.

I removed the painted over upper sash to get at the stained glass. The railroad had soldered a metal sheet over the inside of the colored glass. I removed it and then cleaned up the area.

This is from the outside looking against the interior lighting 

After stripping the paint from the inner sash, I put it back in. Here's the view from the inside.

We only have about half of the hardware for the sash latches. Some were twisted like this one. Jack and I straightened most of them today. Several were reinstalled, with a few more to go next week. I'll have more pics as we finish them up.

Thursday Report

 Time for another quick report on various projects in the car shop.

The next third rail beam is nearly complete.  Today I installed the pentagonal plates that protect the heads of the bolts attaching the third rail shoe assembly to the beam.  Then I finished painting everything with primer, and black will be next week.

Across the aisle, Buzz is making a new door and other parts for the Ely:

Steve Iversen probably deserves the prize for long-distance dedication.  He drives up from Oklahoma quite often to work on Car Dept. projects; right now he's working on the brake systems for the Kansas City PCC.  These PCC cars had a unique system: GE brake actuators.  Everybody else used Wabco parts.

Here he is testing one of the actuators.  It's basically a large 32V solenoid.  Most of them are frozen solid after all these years, but he got this one to work.

Here Tim is inserting plugs to cover up the screws holding the plate onto the (1)268.  He has several other things going on with this car, of course.

Gregg and Jack are continuing to do a great job on the 109.  This is the north side, and it looks pretty complete.  They still have plenty to do on the interior, but it's going to be impressive.

Then I replaced a couple of the pentagons on a beam out in the shop area; I had used wood that was too thin and didn't look right.  It's probably not worthwhile explaining it all in detail.  It's fixed now.

Fred was painting and lettering the roof fuse box for the 306, among other things.  This was his first attempt at stencilling, and it turned out perfectly.  Now you would think that anybody whose job involved climbing onto the top of the car would know that the fuse box has 600 volts, but maybe not...

Finally, the quarter round strip I made last time was installed and painted by the younger guys.  It looks fine.  That red paint is really stunning, and they do an excellent job of spraying it.

So I had some free time, and all the baggage racks for the 451 were just sitting there alongside the car.  So I got out the red paint and the spray gun, and started painting all the baggage racks bright red.  This will really make the car's interior look special!!!

Wait...   sorry...  wrong calendar.  April's not till next week.

Van Dorn Coupler View

Regular IRM videographer Steven Jam just posted a pretty neat video: a view of the couplers between the 309 and 319 during a trip on Showcase Weekend 2025. Enjoy seeing the magic of Van Dorn link-and-pin couplers in action!

Tuesday Report

Practice may not always make perfect, but it usually makes things go faster, at least.  Here's a few projects that are making pretty good progress.

Tim has gotten both sides of the (1)268 repainted as seen here, and he's working on the doors and end platforms.

Gregg and Jack have completed the south side of the 109 (not shown, but it looks great) and today they were busy installing the trim pieces on the north side, among other things.

3142 was over the pit for inspection.  Think Bunny Hop.

I was able to essentially complete the next summer beam in a day.  Now I need to speed up the paint drying somehow.

The 460 train door needed a quarter-round molding piece, seen here.

And Steve continued to work on the piping and wiring on the 306.

Just another productive, satisfying day at the old car shop.