Sunday in Fall

Frank writes...

After temperatures in the 90s the previous weekend, this past weekend was much more seasonable, with highs in the 60s and low 70s. Sunday was very pleasant at the museum. There weren't too many people around for most of the afternoon, though; several of the department regulars were in Chicago riding buses and "L" cars. Ah, well, a few of the stalwarts were still at work.

When I arrived, the detritus from the 2nd Annual Bus Day, held on Saturday, was strewn about in front of the trolley bus garage in the form of most of the operating trolley buses. Visible in this shot are the Milwaukee Marmon, small slices of the Seattle articulated and the Seattle Twin Coach, a Chicago Marmon, one of the Dayton Flyers and our new Seattle Pullman which is not yet in service. These will mostly remain outdoors for the coming week because the Bus Stop Shop is set up in the garage with all kinds of neat books and memorabilia for sale. The shop, which raises money for bus and trolley bus restoration, is only open occasionally but will be open this coming Saturday for Milwaukee Transit Day.

Over at Barn 4, Joel (between the rails) was working on installing new Strombos air horns on the 972. This car never had whistles or horns in service but one is being sympathetically installed at each end so that the car can be used in weekday service for mainline trips. Joel is piping them in to the sander valves, which we don't use at IRM. By the end of the day he had both installed.

While the 972 was present I grabbed a photo of the motorman's position. It has the cabinet layout that was popular starting in the late 1920s, with the controller and various piping encased in a sheet metal console. Someone qualified on the 972 will have to explain what the "coffee grinder" handle right under the center window does.

I spent a while doing paperwork and then got to work doing final fitting for the infamous steel plate for Shaker Heights 18. The last holes were located and drilled and it then got a coat of primer on both sides. Next up is black paint on the back, plus procuring the necessary fasteners, and then it will be installed. I also took a look at the faulty contactor on the 36 but, unsurprisingly, nothing jumped out at me as obviously wrong other than the symptom of spalling on the tip contact surfaces. Hmm.

So let's see what else is happening. I took a walk up to the depot, where it seemed like a pretty busy day. Revenue steam and diesel operation is over for the year but in addition to streetcar 3142 there were two mainline electric trains running, the CA&E steel cars and the CTA spam cans, shown here bracketing a private car that is being stored on Station Track 2 for a few days.

I managed to get a quick photo of Rock Island GP7R 4506, formerly known as C&NW 4160, during a brief switch move in Yard 2. This locomotive has been the focus of an intensive painting preparation effort over the past few months and the diesel guys are very close to starting to apply primer. That's supposed to start this week and whatever primer they're using can only be over-coated within a few days of application, so once they start the clock is ticking. Within two or three weeks we should have a "bankruptcy blue" Geep. Note Charlie, right in front of the engineer's window, applying masking tape to the windows during pauses in the switch move.

And Joel had moved a whole bunch of pallet racks into the "lean-three" during the week. He showed me the plan for how these are going to be set up (against the wall shown in the picture) and it will definitely provide a lot of extra storage space. Among other things these racks will support some armatures that are currently just sitting on the floor. Dan F was able to get the old "Bruce Lampson forklift" running, after a significant amount of work, and that was employed in getting all of these rack components into the shop.

Late in the afternoon the group that had been downtown riding the CTA returned and promptly got to work on the trolley bus shown, a Pullman-built postwar model from Dayton. Last year a number of new tires were purchased and this bus still needed new tires on its left side (which is why it's listing a bit, I suppose). The job Sunday was to jack up the front of the bus so that the front left tire could be pulled; I think that this one is okay, though, not great, and will be cascaded down to a bus with worse tires. Greg is to the left, the legs sticking out from under the bus belong to Richard, and Thomas is out of sight underneath the bus. It was noted that this trolley bus does run and jockeyed itself into this location under power shortly before I showed up. Other visible buses at the back of the garage include CSL 84 on the left, the Muni Twin Coach, and a small sliver of the Edmonton trolley bus on the far right.