Spring is Here

Frank writes...

Well, spring might not quite be here, at least not for a few more days, but Sunday was a pretty nice day anyway. It was sunny and the high was 50 or so, not too bad for mid-March. As mentioned in my father's post it was nice enough for some painting.

Smiling Volunteers Part 1: here he is adding some fresh "Fleet Grey" to the 308 over in Barn 8. When I showed up he was already hard at work. I figured I'd try and finish what I started so I removed the air gauge from the #2 end of the 308 and took it to the shop for testing. This end of the 308 is rarely used, mainly because it has a unique (among our CA&E fleet) motorman's valve which only has two apply positions. Whereas most M-15 valves have three apply positions - slow, medium, and fast - the one at the #2 end of the 308 only has "fast" and "faster".  That makes it a bit trickier to run with. Why this is, we have no idea, only that it's what was on the car when it was in service so of course it's only proper to leave it in place.

Of course I neglected to get a decent photo of the #2 end gauge (oops) but it's fairly similar to this one, which we acquired as a spare a few years ago. Both are from a different maker, Star, than the Beacon gauge at the #1 end of the 308. Note these only go up to 160 lbs rather than up to 200 lbs like the Beacon gauge. Even this differs from the #2 end gauge in the 308, though, in arrangement of the lettering and attachment screws. But I digress.

The inside of the #2 end gauge was remarkably clean and only needed a little cleaning and oiling of the gear teeth to get it ready for service. Thanks again to Richard for his help and advice with this.

That didn't take long, so I left to help (or maybe I should say I went to "help") with the crew working on Milwaukee 972. This car was cleared for limited service last year but concerns about side bearing clearance on one truck had been raised. So raised it was, on Sunday, this time on jacks. Joel, Richard, Greg, Thomas, Nick, and myself all helped with this effort. Here Nick peers down the length of the car as this end sits raised a few inches on jacks. We just needed to get the car high enough to put some fresh grease "cookies" into the center bearing bowls and pull some shims from one of the side bearings.

Smiling Volunteers Part 2: Richard looks in on the center bearing. If you look closely (directly over the square nut with cotter pin in the very foreground) you'll see that the body half has been raised above the bowl, attached to the truck bolster, so that Joel can drop in the grease cookies from inside the car through the motor motor inspection hatches.

Won't you all give Joel a hand, ladies and gentlemen!

After this the car was pulled east and the other end jacked up to repeat the operation, though no shims needed removal at that end. After a test trip or two around the car line measurements were taken again and were satisfactory, so with the completion of annual inspection items the 972 should again be cleared for limited service. It's still in the "running-in" phase so the shop workers will be keeping a close eye on it for a while, but look for this car on the car line on a few days this coming season.

As usual, there were other projects being worked on as well. Bob Sundelin, our resident machinist, had an unusual bolt for an RPO (I think) on the lathe and had also been making parts for the grinding machine out in the barn, while Thomas and Nick were still slaving away at getting the 4410 ready for service, repairing more leaky air valves. And in other good news I ran into Mark Secco, who is working on repairing the CGW wrecker. Once that's done it can be moved and Shaker Heights 18 can be brought up to Barn 7.