Getting close on the roof

Work on the 205's roof is getting close to finished, with the exception of a bit of touch-up painting - and of course blowing off all that sawdust! Today the big project was to install the trolley base stands. These steel stands were used by many suburban cars (IT 415 and SS 68 among them) to raise the trolley base a foot or so above the roof boards, to accommodate higher trolley wire hung with taller interurban cars in mind. The stands had been needle-chipped and repainted a few years ago so they were all ready to put on the car. I made a pattern out of a spare piece of plywood (that had, by the way, formerly been masquerading as one of IT 101's doors) to represent the trolley bases and used that to keep the stands square and aligned as they were installed. The family brace and bit set was once again trotted out to drill the holes. Below left, the template sits attached to the first set of stands prior to drilling holes and bolting to the roof boards; below right, both sets of stands are seen in place.




Once this was completed, I turned my attention to the trolley bases themselves. The bases were sitting out in the storage area along Bruneau Drive for years and had gotten pretty rusty, making it impossible to budge the adjustment nuts. This was a problem because I don't want much tension on the trolley poles - basically, just enough tension to hold the poles up against the hooks is fine! Heavy tension would, over the years, tend to warp the roof boards. Dan Mulvhill and Bob Sundelin came to the rescue with Dan running the acetylene torch (left) to heat up the nuts so that they could be broken loose. With some able torch work, Bob and I were able to get the adjustment nuts off. On my next trip out I will reinstall the adjustment nuts to set the tension as light as possible, and hopefully will be able to put the trolley bases - and if we're lucky, trolley poles too! - back on the 205. It will finally be a real trolley car once again!

Finally, before I was done for the day I brought the second trolley pole from the 308 over to Barn 4 and knocked the rivet out of the trolley harp. This will be the next beneficiary of the harp/shoe upgrade program currently in progress (see entry below).