Gauge your interest in this

Frank writes...

I had hoped that, given the nice weather, Sunday might be a good day to finish the switch move to put Shaker Heights 18 under wire. But it turns out that the crane parked outside the door on track 131 isn't moving anytime soon; it's missing some part (which is on order) so until that arrives it's static. I'm hoping that it's days or weeks until we can retrieve our stranded streetcar but it could be months. Only time will tell. So in the meantime Joel pointed out that a defect for the 308 had been noted on one of its car report cards indicating that the air gauges were sticking. On the advice of Richard I decided to try and tackle this.

The CA&E wood cars have a single duplex air gauge at each end which shows brake pipe pressure and main reservoir pressure (my father has always colloquially referred to these as the "clocks" but I'm guessing this is a Randy Hicks-ism and not a CA&E-ism). I removed the gauge from the #1 end, which is the end from which we usually run, and brought it into the shop. Our recently-repaired gauge tester has become very popular and Richard showed me some of the tricks to using it. Above, our gauge is at the top left while the calibrated gauge that stays with the tester is in the middle. Just behind it is a coil from the 3142's line switch, though more on that later.

After getting some baseline readings, proving the gauge was not only sticking but was a bit out of adjustment, it was time to disassemble the thing. The reverse side of the gauge face, shown above, suggests it was either built or last serviced in 1951.

And here's what the gauge looks like inside. It consists largely of a pair of curved Bourdon tubes, which as pressure increases are gradually "bent" outwards, pulling on a lever and turning a pinion which turns the needle on the gauge. The Bourdon tubes are concentric while the levers are mounted one in front of the other. A is the main reservoir Bourdon tube, B is the one for the brake pipe, C is the pinion for the brake pipe needle (the pinion for the main res is behind it on the same alignment), D is the sector gear for the brake pipe, E is the span adjustment screw for brake pipe lever, and F behind it is the same adjustment for the main res lever. These adjustment screws had to be loosened and the lever "throw" adjusted slightly. Once everything matched up with the calibrated gauge on the tester the gauge was reassembled.

While Richard was showing me how to conduct these tests and make the adjustments, Jeron was cleaning the "clock face" and Greg was spray-painting the main reservoir needle red, as the original red paint was completely gone. Once these were put back in place (but before the glass and housing frame were reinstalled) the gauge looked like this. Pretty sharp! Note that the builder referred to this not as a gauge but as a "gage." Regardless, Richard cut me a couple of small gaskets for where the gauge attaches to the piping and I reinstalled the gauge on the 308. Next time perhaps I'll tackle the gauge at the #2 end. Many thanks to Richard, Greg and Jeron for their help with this.

There were a lot of people in the car shop and a lot was happening. One big project was diagnosing and repairing an issue with the line switch on the 3142, which was on the pit for its annual inspection. Basically the line switch wasn't tripping out properly, but some cleaning up seemed to fix it. Greg and Richard were working on this with help from Bob and Joel. Nick and Thomas were working on the 4410, replacing a leaking angle cock with one from storage. Above are all of the spare angle cocks that were tested - and failed - before they finally found one that was airtight. Ugh!

Joel and Bob, shown above, were drilling holes in the floor to secure the lathe shown in the foreground. It is the latest component of Joel's long-running campaign to rearrange and clean up the car shop. In addition Tim was working on stripping wall panels for the 1754 over in the wood shop while Shelby continued working to organize and sort the department's technical library.