Monday, June 7, 2010

This Is Brilliant!

(Photo by Bill Wulfert)

"Brilliant Red," to be exact. On Saturday the 319 was switched out of Barn 2 over to Barn 8, as mentioned before. Thanks to all who helped! The 409 is now in its place, ready for surface prep to begin.
(L) Dan Fenlaciki and Stan W.

I did some testing on Saturday. The compressor armature meggers only 500K, which is worrisome. We'll let you know what happens next.

Walt Stafa was here and has started diagnosing the control system on car 36. He's an old friend of ours from Ohio and has the expertise to fix whatever problems are encountered.
On Sunday we rearranged the cars in Barn 8, so the 319 is now behind the blue cars. Norman, Jeff B., Frank H., and I also worked on finishing the motor truck which we'll be shipping to the Connecticut Trolley Museum in a few days in exchange for the correct motor truck for the 36.

(L) Norm is working on tightening bolts. (R) The motor truck over the pit. The motors were rebuilt in Cleveland and thus have nice clean paint.

Frank and I also did some more testing on the 319; the control group works fine, as we expected. We'll be continuing on inspection and lubrication with the goal of having the car operational by July 3rd.

Frank adds...
Later in the day I helped out with putting a tarp on Milwaukee Electric M37, the container car, and then assisted Greg K. in removing the storm window retainer plates from the 460 while it was over at Barn 4 (see below). A bunch of department volunteers had been trouble-shooting the 460 and have gotten the MG set working and trolley pole bases repaired, among other recent improvements.

11 comments:

Ken MacLeod said...

Job well done Randall.

Scott Greig said...

Wow...I gotta say, that blue-gray looks a LOT closer to what I've seen in period slides. The gold lettering on the letterboard will help it even more.

Scott Greig said...

On the 460...its General Electric 17KC54 controllers are radically different from anything we have in service. They are closer to a controller from a modern South Shore car...in fact many of the parts are interchangeable.

I cleaned up and inspected both controllers on Saturday, and spent a lot of time figuring out what care they needed...cool to learn some new "old" technology!!

Zach said...

Hi Randy,

That first shot is good. I would be grinning like that too if I was leaning on such a beautiful machine! :D

Randall Hicks said...

As to the "Aurora Gray" I believe this is the most correct choice we could make; it looks to me exactly like the preserved samples we have. But others disagree, and I bet this controversy will never really be settled. Just like your typical RyPN thread.

David Wilkins said...

Hey, is that a dig against me?

Randall Hicks said...

No, not at all. I'm on your side, you know that. It's those other bozos who keep beating a dead horse.

David Wilkins said...

Oh it reminds me of the prison warden in "Cool Hand Luke" when discussing the bozos "some people just never learn"

Anonymous said...

In the photo of the 460, it appears that there is a tear in the roof canvas. Is that the case? What is the overall condition of the roof canvas on this car?

Frank Hicks said...

The 460 has a few small tears in the roof canvas; the one on the end appears to have been caused by a streetcar's trolley pole being run into the bigger interurban car while in Ohio. Overall the condition of the 460's roof is good, though.

Joe S. said...

I should add that the roof on 460 is planned for eventual replacement, but it is not quite as bad as 451 which lost a large section of roof canvas during transport. Besides the hole in the end of the roof, large sections of canvas are ripping along the tack line, as evidenced in the photo down the side of the car. The car will also need new trolley boards, as half of them were removed to allow installation of the pantograph in Cleveland, and the other half are pretty rotten. We have temporarily installed some new wood so we could mount trolley bases and move the car around easier.