Time For a Brake

The whole day was spent working on hand brakes on the three CA&E wood cars, 308, 309, and 321. I was inspired to do this by words of Bob Opal, actually. None of the hand brakes have worked in the past, and I'm positive they weren't functional on the CA&E by the end of service, if they ever were. But I wouldn't want to try to explain that to the FRA. And then there's personal pride -- I don't want to admit there's anything I (or we) can't fix. Nothing mechanical is alien to me.

Be that as it may, the first step was to go to the 321 to get some parts that were missing on the 319 when we received it, and to check how the hand brake rigging was arranged. This (R) was the missing link. I also needed a 3/4" bolt to act as the fulcrum for one of the levers, which I got from stock. On the 321 all of the levers are solidly frozen in place, so getting this link loose was difficult.

The 319's completed rigging looks like this (L). (White) The rod from the #1 end hand brake ends here, and pulls on the big lever to the right. Out of sight, there's a chain which pulls on the live lever to set the brakes. (Red) The rod from the #2 end is attached to the other end of a lever, which is connected via the no-longer-missing link (yellow) to the same brake lever.

And here's another view; the hand brake lever has this chain which will pull on the live lever when taut; at the far right is the end of the piston of the air brake cylinder. All the rest of the brake rigging is fully functional, of course. At the #2 end the lever inside the car is frozen to the shaft, so it can only be rotated less than 180 degrees. I worked to remove it, but so far without success. Maybe when it's over the pit for inspection I can fix it. In the meantime, the hand brake at the #1 end works. The whole mechanism needs lubrication, to be sure.

Now here's the 309 before I started. The chain was cleverly arranged so that if it was ever pulled tight, it would crush the armored cable carrying the 600V control circuits. Oops. I was able to reposition the cable slightly and run the chain between the frame and the cable. I also replaced the bolt holding the chain to the hand brake shaft, since it was badly bent. The hand brake is now functional, although it also needs to be lubricated, of course. The 309 has a hand brake only at the #1 end, so the mechanism is much simpler than on the other cars.

On the 308 one end also needed its chain repositioned, which I did. But there are still problems. At one end, the brake lever doesn't work; it won't turn the shaft. At the other end, the pawl on the floor is the wrong design and will not engage the gear. It needs to be replaced. How did that happen?!? And then, the chain to the live lever, similar to the one above, is way too long and needs to be shortened by at least one link. As it stands now, it could never pull the live lever. So there are still a few issues to fix.

Well, I hope that was boring enough. Meanwhile, some of the masking paper has been removed from the 518, as seen here, and it looks great. It's now over the pit, so it could be pulled outside for painting, I suppose.

And work is progressing on the new addition to the B&G palace. In the morning, the contractors had just started raising the roof trusses into place (L).

By afternoon, roof framing was complete, and they were busy finishing up the various stringers and other details.