Wednesday Report

Because the CA&E wood cars are stored in Barn 8, and have been there for a long time, it's convenient to have a nearby workshop and parts storehouse available.   LSE car 150 serves this purpose well.  I got myself a new set of shelves that were on sale to help organize all the stuff that somehow keeps accumulating, and today I set it up and spent a couple of hours sorting parts and throwing out trash.

Before I cover it up, here's what a typical post looks like: it's full of screw and nail holes, from the days misspent as a flower shop.   Restoring the interior woodwork would be a hopeless task.

Anyway, it helps to have parts sorted and labeled.

Gerry Dettloff and John Faulhaber came over to look inside the 213, one of the MD cars for which they want to rebuild or replace the doors.   They needed to take some measurements and look for parts, so I had a chance to see inside.

I'm pretty sure this very historic bulkhead part is not from LSE 150, but North Shore 150, the first steel car on the North Shore Line.   It promises to be an extremely challenging restoration project, since the rest of the car is missing, but parts is parts.

But let's look at a restoration project that actually has some hope of completion, since Frank Sirinek, Steve Iversen, and Mike Stauber are hard at work on Kansas City PCC 755.   The car now has this nice herald applied.

The door over the front controls in the ceiling has been installed.

The motorman's control panel.

The car has been modified several times over the years.  There are several sets of holes in the ceiling, for instance, and part of the challenge is to determine what configuration of stanchions and so on is correct for a particular time period.

Let's take a ride to the country club!

The car currently has the wrong doors, since they were replaced by SEPTA.  Steve spent most of the day working on rebuilding correct doors from other Kansas City PCC's.   Over the years, Frank and he have collected doors of the correct type from various KC carbodies, a couple in Missouri, and one Kansas City PCC which was stored at a chemical waste dump in New Jersey.   Frank found that one somehow and got the doors from it.  He will go to any lengths to acquire the correct parts!

Tim Peters was not around today, but he has not been idle, of course.  It looks like all four doors for the 1754 have been assembled.

I think I see some sort of pattern here.

Jon Fenlaciki and Norm Krentel were working on the backup switch for the 65.  This box has a piece broken out of it and needs to be replaced.

Also, as usual there were several people from the Coach Dept. working in the shop on their projects, mostly the Rock Island cars, I believe.   But I don't want to step on Roger's toes, so I'll let him report what they are doing on the IRM blog.

Most of the day I spent stripping paint, sanding, and repainting in the 319.

It's nice and warm in here.

Finally, Henry was making nice new wooden plugs for the electrical connectors on the Rock Island coaches.   The blocks protect the contacts from the weather, and also keep people from sticking their fingers inside, much like the plugs you may have in your home to keep small children from inserting objects into them.  Not sold in stores, so we have to make our own.