Monday, October 14, 2013

Obligatory Trip to the Pit Lead

Regular blog readers will know that a recurring feature on Hicks Car Works is the trip to the pit, where we take one or more cars over to the Barn 4 pit or pit lead to do something on them that can't be done in Barn 8.  Sunday was the latest example of this; below, the obligatory photo of cars sitting on the pit lead, in this case the 36 and 309.

The goal of Sunday's sojourn was to needle-chip the side sills on the 36.  The exposed steel side sills hadn't been stripped since the 1920s, as evidenced by numerous layers of paint (from the top they were Trolleyville black, 1950s red, 1940s blue, 1940s black, 1930s dark red and 1920s dark red, the latter two very similar but still distinguishable).  Below, the obligatory before-and-after photo.
One of the odd things about the side sill on the "L" side (currently the north side) is that the I-beam was spliced at some point early in the car's life for an unknown reason.  We know it was early because both sides of the splice had the same paint colors going back to the 1920s.  This splice is located about a third of the way from the #1 end; the shorter piece, to the right of the splice, has "Cambria" cast into it.  Below, the obligatory close-up photo
I was only able to get three-quarters of the way down the car side before daylight started to give out on me, threatening my ability to return to the barn while I could still see what I was doing (thanks to Greg Kepka for helping get the cars out of and back into Barn 8!), but I did also needle-chip the #1 end anticlimber and part of the bumper at that end.  The obligatory overall photo of the work done is shown below.
The side sill can now be wire-wheeled, primed and painted.  It will be blue, as the 36 is going to end up in the same version of the "Early American" livery that the 308 now wears, with the notable difference that it will have a black roof.

And now for something completely different.  In the wood shop there were a couple of intriguing items on hand.  The first was a pair of CA&E third rail beams, shown below, with another one or two in lesser stages of completion.
And then there was this door, which was labeled something along the lines of "Not sure what car it's from - ???"  I'm not sure what car currently at IRM might have sported something like this.  It appears to be a cab door, due to the window shade, and is a rolling door rather than a swinging door.  Any ideas?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The mystery car door is from a Chicago Surface lines car, one of opposing doors from the boarding platform to the seating areas. Look closely and you will see the CSL car number stamped in two places on the top rail. This is from the number two end. It is a sliding door into a pocket so thus the sideways operating shade and roller.

Bob Kutella

Frank Hicks said...

Interesting, Bob - thanks for the info! Do you recall what the car number is, and whether it's the same type as any of the CSL cars at IRM?

Frank Hicks

Anonymous said...

THe number is on the top aril and I do not remember it here at home. I think it was in the 2xxx series and Bill Wulfert saw that and I got the impression it did not match one of our cars. Maybe a Brill? I will try to remember to look at it again next time I ma on site and maybe write down the number this time. The next mystery is how it came to be at IRM. Maybe from ERHS? It has been in its stored location longer than the history of most of our current volunteers.

Bob Kutella

Anonymous said...

OK. The mystery door is from Chicago Surface Lines 2723. That is not one of our car types from the CSL. How did it get here?

Bob Kutella

Randall Hicks said...

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it lies another dimension....