IRMA On Stage

 We're cranking up the publicity machine for IRMA's debut.  She'll be the talk of the town, I hope.   Here Dave Diamond proudly shows us a sign that will be mounted at the entrance gate, near the ticket booths.  There will be others around the property, also.

 

On Thursday, I spent some time attaching the new roundels to various equipment signs already in place.  Dave suggested we use a special high strength double-sided tape.  It's what the CTA uses for applications like this, so as Dave says, if it's good enough for them it's good enough for us.  It's easy to apply and leaves no mess.

 Here are a couple of examples.

Well, that was fun and not difficult.  Now it's time to get back under the 36.  Rod ordered a crimp tube of the right size, and also provided me with the big crimping tool.  It was almost too big, actually, as here inside the contactor box there was hardly room for the long handles.  But I managed to crimp the cable together.  This one had just been cut in two when the system was being disassembled at Cleveland.

 The next thing to do was to put a length of heat-shrink tubing in place, heat it up, and then tape over it for good measure.  These motor cables are mostly 2/0, by the way, but some are 1/0 for whatever reason.

And after the other connections are made, the contactor looks like this.  I then managed to hoist the last one into position and connect it.  So all of the contactors in box #2 are complete.  This was the hardest part of the job, because there's so little room to work with under the car.  Two more go into box #3, which faces out, and then we'll be done.

In the evening Frank and I attended the memorial service for Jim Nauer in Marengo.  A large number of Museum members were there to share their condolences with the family.  Dan Buck read the service and gave the homily.  We will also be having a memorial on the property later this year, and we'll let you know when the arrangements have been made.