Wednesday Report

It was another nice day today, so many projects were being worked on.

The first thing I did was to work with Pete Galayda on the Charles City locomotive.  We weren't able to actually test it today, but I verified that the brake system appears to be working correctly, and we rechecked that the control system also appears to work.  

 This is the governor, a GE design which is completely different from the more common Westinghouse models.  I looked at it thoroughly, but could see no way to adjust anything.  It's currently set for a range of 95-105, which is acceptable.   We would prefer a range of 15 psi, but for now this will work OK.

And I got to check out the newly paved section of Central Avenue for the street scene.  It looks great.

Looking south on Railroad:

Looking towards the paving block section:

And farther west:

The curb includes the insets for access to the buildings to be built west of the Schroeder store.

And at the current west end of the street:

And beyond that is Knut's windmill, the last remaining vestige of pre-IRM days.

I spent most of my time working on vestibules, first in the 36.   The floor has a few places where bolts are covered over with little metal plates, but this one had been missing for a while.

 It should look like this:

I made a new piece at home and installed it.   After painting, it looked like this.

And I worked more on stripping the brake valve and other parts in the vestibule, and cleaned off and repainted the weather stripping around the pocket door.  It was then primed, as seen here.

While the paint was drying, I turned to the 319.   The #1 vestibule is mostly painted, but a while back we had to replace a cutout cock, and the piping got unavoidably scraped up in the process, so it looked pretty ugly.  Time to fix this.

The pipes were cleaned off and sprayed with primer.

Followed by a first coat of finish red.   Painting these pipes with a brush can be somewhat frustrating, so I'll try to find a spray can of the right color for the final coat.

Last Saturday, Rod fixed up a badly worn handle shaft for the 319, which I took home for minor touch-up filing.   The replacement part works OK, so this one will be held in reserve.   But it looks great.  Thanks, Rod!

In the morning, Gerry Dettloff and John Faulhaber were unloading L car seats from the 213, for storage in the 810.   I meant to take a picture of the 213's door, but forgot.   Anyway, this particular door is almost ready to collapse.   The spare door in the shop will be a replacement for it, but first the parts inside the car, some of which are leaning against the door, need to be removed.   Their current plan is to replace each of the side doors in turn over the winter.

  

Lorne Tweed was working all day on the ducting in the Cleveland car.   Good progress is being made.

Notice also that almost all windows have now been installed in the car.

Once the parts are fitted, he needs to remove them for painting.

 Bob Olson and Mike Alterio were working all day on installing the new electric switch at the south wye, along with its accompanying parts.   Here they are digging holes for installing brackets.

 This is the routing indicator, which will be mounted alongside the switch.   There will also be a warning bell which will ring when the points are about to move, to warn people to stay away from the switch.  This is necessary because the switch is right next to the picnic platform at the pavilion.

And Andy was painting the 50th Avenue canopy, from the bucket truck.