Time for a report on another productive Wednesday. No matter how early I get there, the contractors are already at work. Today they finished up most of the work on raising and tamping both tracks along the Central Avenue extension. In the morning, it looked like this:
This next picture shows how the tamper can be moved from one track to another. It raises itself up on its turntable, and is rotate 90 degrees by hand. Loose rails are laid over to the other track, and it rolls north until it's centered over the north track, then jacked up, rotated, and set down. Pretty clever.
And now the north track is being tamped.
Don Bosan-Bruno was out again, and helped on several projects. We started by replacing the leaking cut-out cock for the whistle at the #1 end of the 36, Don sends along a couple of pictures of the process.
This is starting to get me angry.
Parts being reassembled in the shop.
And as assembled in the car.
It took quite a while to take all the plumbing apart and put it back together again, but when we were done, the leak was fixed. At least it's fun to test! In the picture, the new parts are not blue.
Lorne continues to work on installing newly repainted parts in the Cleveland PCC.
After finishing the whistle project, we started stripping the controller cover for the #2 end of the 36. You can see how the paint was badly alligatored, for some reason. We started using a heat gun, then switched over to just wire-wheeling all the way down.
And when this was done, Don gave it a first coat of primer.
Buzz shows off the Pullman ladder for the Ely he will be restoring soon.
But more impressive is this:
Where are we? Gosh, this is actually the Lean-3. Buzz and the others have been cleaning it up in preparation for ARNFEST, the annual meeting of old machinery enthusiasts. Among other things, our ancient jointer has been moved and partly disassembled:
The visitors will include some babbiting experts, who will be pouring new bearings for the jointer. On Saturday, remind me to bring over four motor bearings for the 309. Do they offer bearing repair while you wait, I hope?
Victor shows off some Bondo repairs to the wagon-top boxcar, on one badly rusted panel. They're just touching up a few minor details before final painting can be done. This isn't his only current project; they're also starting to install tack molding on the Pennsy bobber.
One thing that had been bugging me for a while is that when the 319 was painted back in 2010, the Armstrong window-wiper mechanisms weren't masked off, so parts of each wiper were red. It should be entirely black.
So Don and I decided to fix this. The wipers were masked off, and Don sprayed both of them with gloss black.
After being sprayed: (photo by Don Bosan-Bruno)
It's a big improvement, if you know what to look for. Pay no attention to that destination sign in the window.
Rebuilt and cleaned-up Kevin sign for the 308. This one dates back to 2001.
And by the end of the day, both tracks, at least the parts being done at this stage, have been raised, tamped, lined, and cleaned up. I just can't wait for the paving to start!
3 comments:
Randall,
Is there going to be a diamond at that crossing?
Ted Miles
Yes. The streetcar track has to cross four rails of the switch in the main line. But as it was explained to me, we just need to come up with the design, and the diamond can be fabricated offsite and then installed with relatively little difficulty. There are companies that do this sort of thing all the time for mainline railroads. Of course it's not cheap.
Randall,
The Shore Line Trolley Department just bought some diamonds; it might be a good thing to have the IRM track Department talk to someone at Shore Line about who did the fabrications for them. as you say, the installations went very smoothly.
Ted Miles
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