Monday, September 27, 2010

The truck is ready

Yesterday when I arrived at the museum, Norm Krentel was hard at work on the motor truck for the 36. You'll recall that this is the car's original motor truck which was obtained in trade from the Connecticut Trolley Museum earlier this year. Over the last month or so Norm, Jeff Brady and Ray Schmid have been working to re-pack all of the motor armature bearings and axle cap bearings, which will be more difficult to access once the truck is under the car. They also replaced a damaged brush holder with a spare from stock. I helped Norm make a few final waste bundles for the last axle cap, after which we oiled all of the axle caps, topped off the motor armature bearings, and cleaned up our tools. "Doodlebug Dan" Mulvihill helped with the oiling job. The truck (seen at right) is now ready to go under the car!

After this was completed I headed over to Barn 7 and the 205, which hadn't seen much activity in a while. I was able to unscrew and move aside the interior wall panel under the center window at the east end of the car, allowing me to access the back of the car's exterior dash sheet. Rod Turner had drilled a large hole in the dash a few weeks back for the headlight, and with the help of Greg Kepka I was able to bolt the headlight to the east end dash. At left, Greg is seen with the newly-installed Golden Glow headlight that had been provided to the project some time back by Bob Bruneau. The final backdating step at this end of the car will be installation of the MU jumper socket, which is also on hand.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The 205 will be just as nice an addition around the car line as all these darn red cars that are showing up all over the place...
After all Traction Orange is named just for that...

Tom Hunter

Anonymous said...

I sure would enjoy seeing West Towns 141 out in the sunshine on the job one of these years. I noticed it peeking out in one of today's pictures.

Anonymous said...

Frank,
I tank it that the car was MUed in Indiana; as I have never seen any of the Portland cars running in trains.
It is good to see 205 re-appearing as the sister 202 at the Western Railway Museum started to re-appear as Portland 4001. that is the best of both worlds!

Ted Miles