Ready for Service

After some more inspection, lubrication, and repair of minor issues, the 308 and 319 are now ready for regular service.  Our first service day will be Monday, May 25, Memorial Day.

 In the morning I fixed a leak in the glad hands, then pulled the cars outside to lubricate the 319.  The armature bearings are a hundred times easier to check than on the older cars, mostly because the GE 254 is a much better design than the old 66's.  And then the car doesn't have the exposed side sills, and the trucks have smaller wheels and a lower profile.  So compared to the other cars, doing the armatures is a pleasure.   

And I inspected all of the controllers, the roofs, and a few leftover items on the checklist.  I think we've shown you before what the inspection checklist looks like.

 Look in vain for holes in the floor, broken glass, windows that won't open or stay up, tripping hazards, missing seats, and so on.

And no wooden benches along the walls of the car, either.

Later, while checking the 319's roof one more time, I brought along a rattle can and painted all of the leather straps black, so they don't stand out.  And did some cleaning and straightening.  We need to keep an eye on the 308's patched grid box, but otherwise everything seems ready for service.

And then I had a couple of hours to mount the roll sign box on the front of the 150.  It looks pretty authentic, if I may say so myself.  The parts in white primer will be painted orange next time.  And thanks again to Buzz Morrisette for doing the artwork.  I'm afraid this doesn't do anything to get the car ready to run by Member's Day, but it does look much more like it did in service on the LSE.

And lots of other things were going on.  RPO Days are this weekend; the RPO train was in operation, but I never got a chance to get that far today.  The North Shore train was running, the 4391 and 3142 were running on the car line, and a switching class was being conducted.

The 1268 and 1797 were being inspected by Joel.

Eric Lorenz continues making progress on the Cleveland car; he has started installing the bulls eye lights, as seen here.

Mike Stauber is painting the interior of Newark PCC #4.  Some of the control parts are getting an excellent shade of blue, it appears to me.

Trolley buses were running today, and on my way out, I noticed that a number of guys had collected to wash one of them down.  Kids nowadays, you never know what they'll be up to next.