Holiday's end, for now

Frank writes...

You're probably thinking, "you know, I could swear I've seen this picture before."

And you could be excused, as one trip on the Happy Holiday Railway is pretty similar to another. But this will be the last of these photos for this year, as Sunday was the last day of HHR for 2017. I helped out for a couple of trips, riding along with Paul Cronin in cab car 151 while Keith Letsche and Roger Kramer held the fort in the two coaches and Jeron and Jamie (succeeded mid-afternoon by Greg) ran. Having an engineer at each end of the train set makes direction changes nearly instantaneous.

While the car interiors may be regrettably familiar to a lot of our riders, it's hard to deny that this is a sharp-looking train set. And we didn't get any complaints about the cars, which were festively decorated and staffed by an assortment of happy elves, whose happiness was strictly regulated by Nick, official pit boss of Santa's workshop. There was even a soundtrack featuring our own fellow blogger Al Reinschmidt reading "The Night Before Christmas." But anyway, what's happening in the car shop?

As mentioned in the previous post, Sand Springs 68 was made operational Saturday which meant that Wisconsin Electric Power (formerly Milwaukee Electric) steeplecab L4 was brought into the shop. This stalwart had an axle cap bearing run hot during the regular season so the first task was to jack up the locomotive, roll the truck out, and then pull the motor. Above, the truck has been pulled through the efforts of (L-R) Joel, Zach, and Richard, while Nick Dey from the Coach Department looks on.

Top to bottom, that's Nick, Richard, and Zach pulling axle caps. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the axle caps aren't the only bearings that will need work; the body center bearing casting was found to be badly cracked so a replacement will need to be located (or made) and installed. As L4 is not a regular service piece, it's lower on the priority list than other cars currently in need of attention for running repairs, so it will likely be a little while before it's back in service. But never fear, the car shop crew is on it!