Need an Outlet?

Do you ever feel that you need an outlet?  An outlet for your anger and frustration?  I often do, I must admit, especially when it's necessary to run extension cords for a hundred feet or more to avoid that feeling of powerlessness that we've all experienced.  Luckily, that problem in Barn 8 is now being solved.   The contractor is installing electrical outlets along the walls, and here's one right next to the 150 where it will do the most good.  They're not wired in yet, but rapid progress is being made.

He has this nice mobile platform, currently alongside the 36.  For safety, the 600 has to be locked out while the contractor is working, but that's a small price to pay for progress.  Larry Stone and I were working on the 36 today, painting the floor, and since that's not a high-precision job the worklight and droplights we had on hand were sufficient.

Look, Larry's back!  (Sorry, stale joke....)

With two people the work progressed nicely, and by the end of the day we had completely repainted the floor.  We now have two coats of primer on four window's worth, and a first coat on all the rest.

An Army Reserve railroad battalion was visiting IRM to get hands-on experience in inspecting track, bridges, and other parts of a railroad system.  Here Dan Fenlaciki has the two motorman's valves from the Cornwall 14 which he removed for rebuilding, offering to let the soldiers inspect them.  Uh, no thanks.

 As usual, several other projects are active back in the shop.   Lorne is finishing new sheet metal panels for the Cleveland PCC.

And then we went down into the pit to see how Tim is getting along on the 24.  The control system is being put back together, and he's eagerly looking forward to working on the air system.

This is the circuit breaker (overload relay).  By the end of service, most of these had their trip coils removed, since evidently it was felt they weren't needed, and this one has the only trip coil (yellow arrow) we could find.  On our railroad, the sub will probably trip before any mechanical device like this could react, but it's nice to have a complete working system.