Under Pressure

Today was another great day out at the Museum, with nice weather and progress in all directions.  For me, the best thing is that the air system on car 36 has now been fixed and holds air pressure, without any audible leaks.  Joel helped by going over to the air brake parts car with me to select a drain cock, the final missing part.  I kept expecting him to promise me I'd "save big money", and sure enough, I did.  It took a while to finalize the mounting brackets for the tanks, and then retighten a couple of unions, but the air system works as advertised, and the brakes set and release -- what more could you want?  There wasn't much to take a picture of, though.

Next, I started on fixing the hole in the roof of the 460, as mentioned last time.

There are two layers of canvas, and under that is a thin layer of some sort of silk material.  In any case, there's no doubt the 460 is in need of a complete roof job at some point in the future.  In the meantime, I at least want to repair the wood structure properly.  This is what it looks like after removing what's left of the drip rail and peeling back the canvas.

The drip rail was held in with screws, and easily removed.  I took it over to the shop for our sheet metal experts to handle.  It's made of a fairly thick copper sheet.

Then we remove the two layers of thin wood over the curve of the roof, back to the first carline.  Fortunately, there's no damage to any of the structural parts of the roof.  And then, as seen here, I started installing dutchmen to which the new pieces of roof can be attached.  

There's really no way to bend the wood to the required curve over this short distance, so I took some thin wood stock home to steam and bend to shape in my workshop.  The dutchmen are attached with screws and glue, as seen here.

And, in other news....

New Motors

Tim has received the two rebuilt motors for the 24 from Calumet Electric.  They look good as new!

On these GE-55 motors, each brush holder has four separate brushes, so there's a total of 16 brushes needed for the two motors.  That seems rather unusual.

Up To Date

Everything's up to date in the Kansas City PCC; they've gone about as far as they can go.   Frank Sirinek is justly proud of the work that has been done over the past several years.  Steve Iversen spent the last week helping in a heroic push to finish the interior cosmetic work.  It looks fantastic!

Above: the car has been equipped with relatively modern car cards from the present-day Kansas City transit system.  I myself have never been to Kansas City, and want to go there.  I hear they have great ribs.

The car still needs some body and mechanical work.  The exterior was painted by Frank Hicks many years ago, and he would be the first to admit it's not a permanent job, but it looks nice for now.  Anyway, great progress is being made.

Meanwhile, out on the line, the 1630 was running, though I didn't get a chance to snap it.  And the 409 and 431 were running.  

And there were lots of other things going on in the car shop; the track guys were working out on the station tracks, B&G was doing various things, the coach department was active, etc. etc. etc.  But there's always room for more!