Thursday Report

Thursday is usually not a busy day at the Museum, and there weren't many other volunteers around.  But it was a nice day for working, and I have plenty of pictures to show.

The #2 vestibule of the 319 is getting close to completion.  One thing that remains is all the weather stripping around the doors.  It seemed best to do this in a single pass.  They were wire-wheeled to bare metal, where possible, as seen here.

Also, since the ceilings have been painted, it was time to reconnect the buzzer cord at both ends.

And the weather stripping gets painted with white primer.

The white outlining of the door is actually pretty classy.  Too bad it can't stay that way.

I hadn't really noticed this before, but this door has five hinges.  That's very unusual: all other train and side doors on the cars have three hinges, including the other train door on this car.  Just another example of the many inconsistencies that accumulated during these cars' long service life.

It was a nice day for a walk, so let's go check on the 321 for the first time in several months.  While you have your checkbook out to pay Uncle Sam, you might have noticed from the IRM website that we're now soliciting contributions for Barn 15.  It would be nice to get most of the rest of our historic steam collection inside!

The 321 hasn't changed much.  It will still take a few decades to repair.

Now back to work.  I finished up most of the piping for the motorman's position at the #2 end.  The controller cover needs to take a trip to the shop sometime to be repainted.

And at the #1 end, several parts that Greg stripped last time got white primer.

And on the 36, the parts of the truss rod that had been unbent got painted black.   

The only other person from the Car Dept. I saw was Tim Peters, who almost never stops.  He spent most of the day unloading and sorting parts from the 1754 and putting them into storage.

The shop was empty, but there was plenty of evidence of progress.   Regular readers should be able to identify what all these various parts are for.

And Mike Alterio shows us a repro cast iron hand brake wheel for the 24 that he made for Tim.  Very impressive!

While the paint is drying, let's finish up some inspection tasks on the 36.  First of all, we want to check and lubricate the walkover seats.  This is an early design, more primitive than the seats in the other wood cars.  And we're lucky they all work; finding spares would be almost impossible.  Notice that the main transverse beams are wood rather than steel.  That has its advantages: when we got the car, one of them was broken, but I was able to epoxy it together, and if that hadn't worked, I made a couple of spares that are still on hand.

Also, the castings for holding the seat backs don't have rollers like later models do.  That means they have to be lubricated regularly, probably every year.  So I started putting white lithium grease on the tracks, as seen here.   With the right applicator, namely a worn-out lettering brush, the grease can be applied without removing the cushions, which would be a lot of work.  And after a while, they all walk over pretty easily.

And I have my desk set up to keep track of all the paperwork.

Another fun thing to do is oiling up the wheels for the pocket doors.  Above each pocket door is a hinged panel for access to the wheels.  On the 36, they have little spring latches.  (On the 308, you need a screwdriver.)  First unhook the buzzer cord to get some slack, and open the door.

You should be able to see the two castings holding the wheels.  Now oil the bearings.

This one still has one of the original springs for holding the door in the closed position.

Also I checked the windows to be sure they're operating more or less correctly, drop sash in the side doors, and so on.  I haven't tested the match strikers recently, but I'll assume they still function, so we're ready for service!