Route of the Silverliners

North Shore car 757 needs some repair before it can return to service, and I agreed to help, partly because it's currently sitting where I'd like to put the 321 for its restoration. The tack molding on part of one side of the car is rotting out, as shown to the left before I started. After some excavation, we see what's there to the right. The outer layer is tar paper (black arrow), presumably installed at East Troy. Under that is the canvas (grey arrow); in various places there's either two, one, or no layers of canvas. Beneath that is the wood, and the bottom piece (in blue) is the tack molding. Our plan is to replace about 30' of tack molding, and piece in new tar paper. One trolley board also needs to be replaced. I did about 12' in a couple of hours, then stopped because I'll need help moving some stored material out of the way.

After that, I worked on the 321. I checked the compressor and tested the brake system. The governor would need some adjustment if we were going to use it in operation, but for a switch move it's OK. The control system also tested out. We may want to run the car under its own power into Barn 4, when that becomes possible. I then worked on removing more of the roof at the #2 end, where it needs to be rebuilt. No pictures because it's so revolting. I also checked lubrication on the blue cars and sorted parts for a while.

Over the weekend I was in Minneapolis, and I had a chance to visit the Excelsior operation. Car 1239 was operating; here we see its unusual rear end gate design. One interesting aspect of this operation is that they back-pole all the way when backing up. These single-ended cars had only one pole, of course. It seems to work reliably enough for them. The line is about a mile long and has no frogs in the wire. But I promise not to try this at home!