Did you know that electricity is essential for modern civilization? Without it, there'd be no IRM. And at last we have working wall lights and outlets in Barn 8. I probably should have had the wall lights on when I took this picture, but rest assured they work just fine. And you can see the drop light plugged into the wall. So that's a big improvement.
I spent most of the day working in the 36 on the vestibule, as usual. For a break, let's walk out to the south property. It is good to see that the North Western bilevels are finally inside. This is Barn 14, and the center two tracks are designed for extra-high equipment like this.
At midday, most of Yard 15 was empty. You will notice that this is a self-guarding frog, which you don't see very often any more. Later in the day, most of the equipment was pushed back in.
The spot where I usually park next to Barn 8 was stacked with rails, and the bins are full of OTM. More track laying is in the works, though I didn't see anybody from Track to talk to.
And here we have a number of rails specially bent to sharp radius. That's rather intriguing!
In the shop, the motor truck now is painted a nice shiny black. Tim says he's going to weather it.
And the two wheelsets for the truck have been machined and returned, and they will go into the shop soon.
The journal boxes:
And Bill is justly proud of his door latches. Before and after:
And work continued in the vestibule at a slow pace. This piece of molding (yellow arrow) I had taken home last week to replace, but I didn't have wood of the right size. So I decided to epoxy it back together and see how it works. It seems to work fine.
Now that the contractor is done in the barn, the 600 could be turned back on, which was nice. I hadn't had the car lights on since the main compartment was finished.
And in the vestibule, there was more primer on various parts, and then more blue.
And we even had a good number of visitors wandering around, although the barns aren't open and there was no passenger service. First revenue operation will be tomorrow, although the run will be limited due to the hoppers still stored on the main line.
9 comments:
The wheel sets pictured are the ones that were REMOVED from 1024's truck. The replacement set that just came back from being trued were still sitting on the truck today (Saturday). The turned wheels are nice and shiny. Bill Wulfert
Those curved rails are interesting. There are 10 of them. If they are the standard 39-foot length and have been curved to form a circle, the circle would be about 122 ft. in diameter. I would think that would be the diameter of the turntable rail for a table of 130 ft. length. Coincidence?
Thanks for the correction, Bill. I guess that's the result of being in too much of a hurry.
No coincidence. All of the material along Barn 8 and near the coal pile are parts from the 130' turntable we just purchased in Denver, CO.
Randy:
The first revenue operating day was last Sunday the 3rd. Also, all of the door openings on Barns 13 & 14 are the same height. There aren't any "extra height" tracks.
Well, I'm positive that the two center roll-up doors are mounted higher than the outside ones, but I can't find a good picture to demonstrate that right now. I would have thought that meant there was slightly greater vertical clearance on the center tracks. The roof trusses are flat, to be sure.
Randy,
The self guarding frogs are pretty common here at least. As a rule they are stuck in yards and other area's where speeds are low.
The interurban and trolley equipment must be kept off these frogs. Speaking for the Milwaukee electric cars specifically, they will derail on these frogs nearly every time. The TMER&L cars and locomotives do not have standard width wheels so will not function on these frogs. In fact, the reason the D15 and D-16 do not have traction motors in them is because a Milwaukee road employee wrongly concluded that the motors were causing the equipment to derail, they were removed by the Milwaukee and the cars still derailed.
In my opinion these frogs should be banned from IRM for safety reasons.
Randy Stahl
Randy:
I think the restrictions on equipment with non-standard wheels are pretty well understood by the people involved. They can be a problem with any standard special work, and so typically don't get moved very often, and then only with great care. Eventually we would like to have a streetcar line with girder rail built to CSL standards so some of these cars could operate, but I don't know when that will happen. On the other hand, I believe some locomotives, such as the Decapod, have treads that are wider than standard and are liable to walk right over a self-guarding frog. So I suppose it's not going there either.
The 1630 doesn't do well on self Gaurded frogs either.
Yes, the two center door enclosures and motors are mounted higher on the inside of the front walls, but the door openings themselves are all 17' high. http://www.irm.org/gallery/albums/album370/afm.jpg
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