Today we finished preparing our three steel CA&E cars for shipment to the Museum. Actual loading and transit should start tomorrow (Monday). A substantial crew of Museum volunteers went to Cleveland to do the work and make this possible.
I arrived early enough on Friday to do some sightseeing. There isn't much left at the old Trolleyville location; all of the track and line poles have been removed, except for this one by the office. The display track in the parking lot is gone. If you look closely, you'll see "Trolleyville" on the sign over the door.The city park along the Rocky River is quite scenic (though not railroad-related) so I did quite a bit of hiking and picture taking there. And we all had some great eating and conversation together.
Here's the 460 in the yard. This was the last car with a pantograph, so it was being used as a locomotive (and fan trip vehicle!)I was too busy to take many pictures. I met Steve Heister from NORM on Saturday; he took a lot of photos and will post them on the CA&E list.
Here we are on Saturday trying to remove the steps and pilot from one end of the 451. The design of the St. Louis cars makes this incredibly difficult, much harder than any of the others. Who knew? From left to right, Alex Mahoney, Jon Fenlaciki, Warren Lloyd, and Frank Sirinek. Alex is a former Lake Shore volunteer who worked with us both days and was a tremendous asset. He's now an honorary IRM member. Thanks!
Our friend Walt Stafa showed up on Saturday and was a great help, as always. Here he is helping with the 409.
Photo by Steve Heister
Of course, I must also thank Tim O'Donnell for all of his help and coöperation, and Carl Wilgosz, an RTA employee. They went out of their way to assist us.
If I'm forgetting anybody, let me know!
Finally, here's a portrait of our three cars in the yard during a switch move.
So what kind of "fan trips" did you guys do with the 460 then?
ReplyDeleteWe are hoping the 453 will make its way to Brook Park this week so we can be there this coming weekend to prep it for the trip to Scranton. Your comments about the difficulty with the 450's is making me nervous. Can you give us any sage advise or pointers about removing the steps from your experience last weekend?
ReplyDeletethanks, mike trosino
Sure. The steps are held onto the carbody with a large number of bolts, most of which are rusted and hard to turn. On many of them you can't easily access the nuts, so we decided the only way to do this in a reasonably short time was to grind off the heads. How to reassemble them will have to wait for later; probably piping to the motorman's controls will have to be removed.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I suggest you bring at least one hand-held grinder with lots of replacement wheels. There's a torch at the shop you can use for freeing up the larger bolts. Bring somebody who can run the torch, of course. You'll also want some large adjustable wrenches and at least two large ratchet sets with extended sockets. And the more hands you have, the better. And of course, appropriate safety gear.
Randall
Well what we have in the van is a 4" angle grinder with about a dozen wheels, a 3/4" socket set with a breaker bar and a 4' pipe, a 24" adjustable, and a 24" pipe wrench, a 1/2" socket set, and various combination wrenches and other hand tools, a few hammers up to a 10 pound sledge, a lining bar, a 4' crow bar, two cans of Kroil, and a sawzall. Think I need to add the 1" socket set?
ReplyDeleteRight now there are three of us that can make the trip and two of us can set fire to anything with the blue wrench.
mike
That sounds like a good selection. It couldn't hurt to bring the 1" socket set. Am I forgetting anything? Mostly I'd say you probably need more people.
ReplyDeleteThat will prob be enough tools to get the stepwells and pilots off. The traps mount over the stepwells, you will have to take them off as well to get the steps off. Once the steps are off, you can re-attach the traps to seal up the end of the car for shipping. You may want some bolts and nuts for this. Most of the screws in the kingpin covers are really tight, and you may not be able to get them out. If you can bring a drill and bits to drill them out that would be good. We also brought plastic sheeting to wrap underbody components with open vents such as the MG set. Both of our 450s had the line switch covers coming loose, and we had to secure them as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good tips, I'll throw a drill and bits into the mix. I forgot to mention we have a roll of that plastic pallet wrap to to put around things.
ReplyDeleteNot sure we are going to get more than three, turns out to be a bad weekend for a few of us. Of course the 453 hasn't moved yet...
mike
A selection of photos of IRM volunteers prepping their cars on Saturday and the some of Mondays work have been posted in the photos section in the "CA&E on Cleveland RTA" folder.
ReplyDeleteSteve Heister
Northern Ohio Railway Museum
www.northernohio.railway.museum
Thanks, Steve, those are great! I took the liberty of copying over a picture of me, grinding away.
ReplyDeleteA reliable source tells me that 451 and 409 are gone from Brookpark. 460 is on a dolly wheels. Trucks for all the cars are gone as of 6:30pm Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteSteve Heister
Northern Ohio Railway Museum