Thursday Shop Report

Thursday was another busy day in the shop.  I have just a few pictures of what was going on.  In the morning I put together another third rail beam after jointing, ripping, gluing, and so on. 

But the main project was the train door for the 460, of course.  I've started by making a repro bottom rail, but that was left at home  (on purpose).  I've planned out how the new wood will be patched into the door, and the patches to the stiles were taken home for fitting, and so on.  This should work out well.

As mentioned last time, there's a metal plate that goes on the inside of the door that was partly rusted out.  It appears to me we have several spare pieces of sheet metal on hand that could be used to make a replacement, by anyone who has experience with sheet metal.   That would be appreciated.

And of course other projects were going along well.  Here we see a couple of newly-repainted windows for the 109.

And the Michigan Electric 28 is being painted.  The front end looks great!  At the bottom right you can see the front train door which has been painted too.

Tim has started installing the new floor in the 268.  This is one of those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, but it didn't come in a box.  He had to make them himself.

Fred and Gerry were working on putting together the fuse box on the roof of the 306, but I couldn't get a picture very easily.

And Phil was working on wiring in the cabs.

Finally, Gregg, Jack, and Ralph continued making progress on the Green Bay car, but I'll let them publicize their own work.  

Barn 6 Switching

When Barn 15 is approved for occupancy, we will be doing a lot of switching. I mean pretty much all the departments, not just the Electric Car Department. There will be equipment rearranged in just about every barn. For the Car Department's part, we're getting a jump start on some of these switch moves. Late Saturday afternoon into the evening, the switch crews were hard at work on tracks 63 and 64, and our fearless freelance photographers Joel Ahrendt and Zach Ehlers were kind enough to send in photos. These are not necessarily in correct chronological order.

Here's a beautiful sight: a four-car North Shore train with two Silverliners leading two cars in economy green. (ZE)

And another view. The train is on the tail track, of course. (ZE)

What's better than a four-car North Shore train? Why, a five-car North Shore train, of course! The 160 still has a traction motor out at the shop for rebuilding, so it hasn't seen much use lately, but it was MUed with the other four cars for the switch move. (ZE)

West Towns 141 had some particularly cold (read as: solidified) crater grease in its gear pans, but it finally got moving. (JA)

The 1797 and 1754 are shown spotted over on the Yard 8 Connector track. (JA)

One car that is seen outside very rarely is Milwaukee Electric 1129, painted and lettered inaccurately as the 1111 many decades ago. (ZE)

Here's another view of the 1129. This is a single-ended car and only has four doors: its two train doors, a motorman's door at the front right, and a single passenger access door at the rear right. (JA)

One of the most beautiful cars in the collection, the "Talisman," also comes outside only rarely. (JA)

An unusual view of the entire south half of Barn 6 completely emptied of equipment. (JA)

The 504 was the first back into the barn. This will be its new display location, at the west end of track 64 instead of the west end of track 63, where it has lived for many years now. I believe the plan is for the 1129 to go off display and join the "Menominee" in Barn 13. (JA)

Green Bay Car Update

We know your heart is full of questions. What's the meaning of life? How long is a piece of string? How high is up? And what in the world is that enormous green thing without any trolley poles doing out in Barn 4? Fortunately, our indefatigable investigative iournalist Gregg Wolfersheim has all the answers! He has sent in this progress report on Green Bay & Western 109.

Ralph is fitting small pieces of oak trim where it was previously notched out for wall partitions.

Not to be outdone by Ralph, we see Jack working on other pieces of trim. This has been a time consuming process, but it makes the car more complete.

On the outside, I fitted some vertical trim near the ends. Now in primer but, soon will be painted green.

The west door was sanded and partially primed.

Here are some of the trim pieces installed. The large square pieces replace several that were missing or cracked from the holes used to hold up the baggage racks. Below them, are several smaller pieces now stained. Varnish will be applied once everything is up.

From top to bottom: A short piece right under the baggage rack. Then two flat pieces to fill a gap. Below them is a molded section created by using the table saw and the router in the wood shop.

All of the brass hardware in the car is being polished up.

Near the top of the woodwork, Ralph made another piece to fill in. He had to get creative with some blocks and a clamp on the baggage rack to hold the piece until the glue dries.

The emergency brake pull rope was installed. However, the valve is long gone under the car. But, at least there is a representation of the system with the rope running through the eyes in the ceiling.

And, finally, the door is back in place with new guides in primer for the sliding sash.

Tuesday News

Let's start with the bad news first.  Buzz helped me get the #1 train door from the 460 up onto the operating table, and it turned out to be in worse health than I had expected.  Here on the inside there's a metal plate which the other door didn't have.  

It turns out this plate is badly rusted in a few spots and needs to be replaced.  It's just a rectangular piece of sheet metal, so that shouldn't be too difficult.

 

The main problem seemed to be that the bottom of both stiles and parts of the rail are partly rotted out.  It's actually worse than it looks here.

The lower few inches of both stiles are bad, and both tenons on the rail are completely rotted away.  The door was just being held together by the metal plates.

Not quite good enough for regular service.

I started by planing down a couple of spare pieces of wood for use as replacements, but there's a lot more to be done.  I'll do what I can at home.  So let's turn to what other guys are accomplishing.

Here Buzz is repairing a window for the CSL 144.  

Tim continued to work on the new pieces for the floor of the 268.  No pictures this time, but you just have to imagine the constant noise and sawdust.  That's the price of progress.

Speaking of noise, out in the barn Steve Keller was needle-chipping seat frames for the 268.

And Gerry and John were working on the wiring for the 306.

Finally, Gregg, Jack, and Ralph from the Steam Team were working on the 109 again.

Great progress is being made on the interior.

And we certainly welcome and appreciate inter-departmental cooperation!

Finally, this happened too early in the morning for me to get a picture, but several inches of concrete were poured on the floor in the south office room, to raise it to the same level as the rest of the offices and above mean high tide.   But I don't know how exciting a picture of a concrete floor would be anyways.

Chipping Away

Frank writes…

Work is progressing on the 451, and the car was abuzz with activity Sunday.

In fact, it was so abuzz that you'd have been unwise to get too close to the car without hearing protection for much of the day. That's because there were usually two of us needle-chipping in the smoker. Greg, who has been spearheading much of this work, traded off with Jimmy and me. The above photo was taken after we'd been working maybe an hour...

...and here we are at the end of the day. There's plenty left to do, of course, and we haven't even started on the main compartment, but it's really moving along nicely. You'll notice I taped up signs to indicate which side of the car is the "L" side and which is the "R" side. Per normal CA&E practice, these are reversed from what you'd expect: if you're the motorman at the #1 end, the "L" side is to your right and the "R" side to your left. But I digress.

Here's the view looking the other way. More than half of the smoker ceiling is done, which is good, because working over your head is always annoying. We also did a few miscellaneous tasks like taking down more interior light fixtures and tracing the "451" off the bulkhead. Greg removed more wooden trim pieces and started working on removing the partition door so it can be taken into the shop, stripped, and repainted on the bench.

Outside the car, Ashtin worked tirelessly on wire-wheeling baggage racks, which is a time-consuming but important task. Close inspection revealed that these baggage racks were painted blue, same as the rest of the interior. That will be a difference from the 460, which kept its blue interior until the end but had its baggage racks repainted silver at some point. Zach, Greg, and I removed a couple more racks from the car because Ashtin was making such rapid progress that he was about to run out of work!

On Saturday, Dan spent a while honing the cylinders in the 451's DH-25 air compressor, shown here. There's one valve that won't come apart, and we need to make a gasket for this thing, but the compressor is close to having a clean bill of health.

The 451 wasn't even the only CA&E curve-sider being worked on. On Saturday, a couple of the guys took the train door my father rebuilt over to the 460 and installed it. I tried it myself on Sunday; it works like a charm and doesn't scrape on the threshold at all. The guys then brought the 460's other train door, which sticks badly, back to the car shop for repair work.

In other news, don't get used to that brown and orange on the end of the 1268. As you can see, Tim has been painting the car with a fresh, shiny coat of Pullman green. With its semi-convertible windows, it's really going to be a unique and enjoyable car to ride in at the museum.

Here's something I didn't expect to see at the museum. This overgrown beetle-looking thing is a remote-controlled car mover, a battery-powered (I think?) critter that can move a car back and forth at low speed. It's essentially a hy-rail vehicle, so it can drive onto the tracks, lower its railroad wheels, and couple up. We got it for a song from government surplus because the FDA facility in Chicago is being closed and razed; the critter has a bad control module (or something) but is only a few years old and is supposedly quite fixable. The plan is to use this thing for moving cars around the car shop.

And in other shop news, the gantry inside the Track 41 East roll-up door is complete and the overhead wire troughs have been hung all the way to the door. The flip-up wire bridge isn't installed yet, but we're getting close to being able to re-hang wire all the way from the streetcar line to the inspection pit. That will be nice.

Brian and Will were working on rebuilding gauges and other things in the shop. Brian sent me the following three photos showing a peek into their work.

Brian was working on repairing air gauges for the 306. The one shown here had some damaged pieces, in addition to the bad rust, so was not repairable without extensive replacement of components.

Here's a view of the gauge showing the face.

And here's another gauge; I believe this was taken before rebuilding, but this one was repaired and tested. Will was working on repairs to a straight-air motorman's valve, including lapping the valve, as well as some other air-related projects.

Richard and Zach spent time over at the Electroliner helping that crew troubleshoot some wiring issues. They wanted to light up the A1 car, now that the entire ceiling is reassembled, just to identify any problems. Chasing down a disconnected wire took a bit of time, but afterward, voila! (Thanks to Zach for the below photos.)

In this photo of the end of the train, you may notice not just the new markers but also a white light in the center window. That light was a requirement of the 'L' system. On the standard cars, they'd hang a removable light from a chain, but that didn't work on the 'Liners. So, someone from Harrison Street went to Gimbel's and bought a quartet of desk lamps, which were duly affixed to metal brackets inside the end window. These disappeared when the trains when to SEPTA in 1964, but the 'Liner restoration crew has sourced lamps that match the originals and the first has now been installed.

Another milestone on the 'Liner is that the complete restoration of the A1 cab is just about complete. It looks every bit as good as new, and probably better. Kevin on the 'Liner team has been in charge of this work and he has really outdone himself. Hey, no spitting!

Here, we're looking over the controller at the center window. You can see the new white 'L' light to the left of the voltage meter for the battery system. Underneath the window is the emergency headlight, which could be flipped 180 degrees up to shine through the center window in the event that the main headlight overhead failed.

A look overhead shows snap switches for the emergency headlight and the rear white 'L' light, with the ammeter and air gauge to the right. The 'Liners ran a 110-pound brake pipe, because obviously more is better.

We're looking left over the emergency headlight through a little window that afforded a bit of a sightline to the left. The red box holds the changeover switch from trolley to third rail.

You know how the rulebook is written in blood? This sign is written in snapped hand brake chains.

The motorman's-eye view out the front window. Zach was telling us about the brakes on the train: "handle off" is the release position; then there's a quadrant that runs the electropneumatic self-lapping brake; then you get to the "normal" air portion, which is your backup in case your batteries are dead or your EP brake has some other issue. First is lap, then apply, then emergency.

There's even more, because there was a big switch move on Saturday and a couple of our fearless freelance photographers were there to take photos of the excitement, so stay tuned!