Inspection Report

Inspection continues with the 309 being next up.  The 141 is still over the pit, so I started by swapping the 308 and 309 to put the latter at the door.  As a result, it comes out into the sunshine for the first time this year.

At least half of the inspection tasks can be done while the car is in the barn, and everything went well.  The only thing that really needs to be fixed is that the #2 air gauge needs to be recalibrated; both sides read low by about 10 psi.  The way the cars are presently arranged, we will probably be operating from the #2 end, so that should be addressed.  

 A view down the track:

 Here we see the DB-15 contactors in their little arc chute boxes:

And the DB-20 reverser: 

A newly-elected member of the Board of Directors continues his usual activities:

 Jon Fenlaciki continues to work on the roof of the 65.   It's not easy; the ceiling has to be partly disassembled in order to remove or install bolts.  Here we see Gerry helping out from on top of the scaffold:

While Jon applies some torque from inside the car: 

Our new AEM-7 locomotive arrived late yesterday, and is temporarily housed in Barn 2 for repair of vandalism damage and a few other things.  The lighting isn't great, but let's take a tour of the interior.  Jamie happened to be there and showed me through our latest acquisition.

The engineer's control stand: 

And the fireman's: 

The interior is very cramped.  These are a couple of parts of the air system. 

And the rotary compressor: 

Among other things, Buzz is painting new siding for our Milwaukee Road wooden reefer.  The MRHS graciously donated the money to have the siding produced for us.

Finally, I stopped by to see how things were going with cleaning up the old storage tracks near the depot.  Carl and Dave discuss what to do next with the partly-scrapped flatcar body.

And look, there's an abandoned branch line.  You don't see many abandoned right-of-ways around here, because IRM is expanding, not contracting.