Fan Appreciation Day

 The Arizona State Railway Museum in Chandler (a suburb of Phoenix) shuts down for the summer, from sometime in May to the middle of September.  I can see why.

We're not in Arizona, but with high temperature and humidity, it was another good day not to do anything strenuous.   First, I worked on the 460 some more, but up on the platform near the roof of the building, it's worse, even with a fan.  But I now have the parts I'll need for the next step.

And then it was time to reletter the 308.  Here, at least, it's easier to have a fan providing some air movement.  Much appreciated.

If you're not in on the secret, I think it would be hard to detect that this ever said anything else.  I did both ends of the south side of the car, and the north side will be next.  Then I can start on the 36, unless Frank takes away my lettering brushes and insists on doing it himself.

Then there was a problem with the controller at the #2 end of the 319 that I wanted to work on.  The following picture is blurry, which makes it harder to explain, but what can happen is that a brass casting in the controller gets worn away, so that the throttle doesn't close all the way on the first point as it should; generally it will close all the way on the second point.  

The worn-out part is shown by the red arrow.  This could perhaps be brazed up, but that's way beyond my abilities, so for the immediate future I'd like to replace it.  I went out to the 321 to remove the shaft assembly from the controller at the #1 end, which has never been used.

While we're here at Barn 11, notice the nice new paving alongside the barns.  A lot of landscaping work has been done in the area of the new barns, including along the route of the streetcar loop.  I'll have to get some pictures of it sometime soon.

Here's the 321's controller after partial disassembly.  The handle shaft has already been removed.

The 319's controller after removing the top casting.  The handle shaft is still in place.

It turned out, however, that the two parts are somewhat different and could not be interchanged.  But we have several more C6 controllers in stock, and now that I know what to look for, it should be possible to find a good replacement.  So the controller was reassembled and tested, and it works as well as it ever did.  Good enough for the rest of this year, at least.

And then there was more cleaning and straightening.  I also took several pictures of the 24's motor truck; this will make a nice photo essay on how a motor truck works.   Watch this space!

Let's see what other guys are doing.  

Max is installing a replacement pole near the diner.  At lunch he was telling me about installing new ground rods, and the results of his experiments with different ways of avoiding excessive corrosion.  The ground rods consist of four 8' rods that go 32' into the ground, well below the top of the water table.  It's right near the edge of the water table that most of the corrosion occurs.  I could go into greater detail on the principles of electrolysis and its effects, but you can look them up for yourself. 

Bob Olson spent the day moving bundles of new ties.  They were piled near the steam shop, where we will want to have parking for Thomas, so moving them over near Barn 8 is a big help.

John Arroyo continues to work on the interior of the Electroliner nearly every day.  Surface prep is extremely time-consuming, but at least they have a portable air conditioner to make things bearable.  Much better than relying on just a fan.

The inside of the motorman's door is really down to bare metal.

Things are progressing well, and John and Ed can be very proud of their work.