A grey day

Frank writes...

Sunday at IRM was rain, rain, rain. The rain was light but incessant and lasted the entire day. There were a few dozen hardy visitors out, and three cars out on the railroad including Zach running the 3142, but it was pretty quiet around the property. Not so much in the shop, though.

Several of the Sunday regulars including Joel, Richard, Thomas, and Nick were working on inspecting CA&E 431, which is back in service now that its motor leads are repaired. Or at least it would be if not for a balky J governor, shown above in partially disassembled state. J type governors are the bane of trolley museums and IRM has a number of cars that use them including all of our CA&E cars (with the possible exception of the 450s, I'm not sure). This one wasn't leaking, as they typically do when they get worn, but was operating erratically and needed a good cleaning.

Out in Barn 4, Tim was sanding the letterboard on the second end of the 1754 to be rebuilt. He mentioned that he had also been running off basswood roof slats for the impending replacement of the roof at this end of the car.

And Norm and Jeff were hard at work on the 28. Riveting is going along slowly; shown above are a few of the flush rivets that were driven this past week. Work is going slowly because working around all of the various interconnected framing members is difficult with the riveting equipment, but guys from the Steam Department - who have a lot more experience with riveting than us Car Shop guys - have been very helpful.

As for me, I actually didn't get much of anything done in the way of car work. I did go for a training trip on the 415 (Nick, shown above, had like me been fired from the police force during the preceding week and was now doing line training) and another training trip on CA&E 409. But other than some marketing-related work, and getting some hardware for the Shaker Heights car ordered, that was pretty much it for me.