Spring Cleaning

All of a sudden, operating season is just around the corner. Yikes! Where did winter go? Well, we gotta get ready anyhow.

But first, I would like to keep assembling the control system on the 36. The next contactor, #6, was installed with relative ease, although this box is located so that it opens towards the middle of the car. That gets us up to the third point. The next contactor has a problem. One of the motor circuit leads could not be removed from the contactor, since the set screw broke off. So they just sawed the cable apart with a hacksaw. Rod gave me a crimp sleeve which should connect the two parts of the cable just fine. Max has the hydraulic crimping tool to finish the job.

That reminds me of a funny comment I read once.
All good news stories fall into one of three categories:
1) Arrow points to defective part
2) We reveal the guilty man
3) Everything you know about X is wrong!

But now, it's time to start getting ready for service. I reinstalled the next buzzer cord hanger in the 319 and painted it with white primer, as seen here. There were also a few other minor things that needed to be cleaned up in the 319.

I had noticed in the 36 that three of the special street railway bulbs had been replaced with ordinary house bulbs. That's not good. There was a discussion about this recently on RyPN and that prompted me to replace them. I then proceeded to clean up the area around the 36, since the Museum will be opening for visitors next week. We all need to fix any accident hazards and make the display barns as presentable as possible. The windows on the 36 were also very dusty, so I cleaned them all. Dirty windows tempt visitors to write names and slogans, which is undesirable for several reasons.

By the way, you can help! Cleaning sessions are the next two Saturdays, March 31 and April 7. Many hands make the work go fast. So there's fun and fellowship. Thanks!

While cleaning up around the 36, it was obvious I should close up the contactor box facing the aisle, since work on it had been finished. But it was just too stiff for me to do by hand. Then it occurred to me that the contactor lifter would be effective in raising the cover into postion. Voilà!