Rainy Sunday

Frank writes...

Sunday was the first public day of steam operation at IRM, and I didn't even get any photos! But there are some nice photos on the Steam Team's Facebook page here, and you don't even need to register to see them. It was very rainy in the morning so the crowds were small, unfortunately. The 1630 was in service all day regardless, with a very nice-looking train consisting of the Santa Fe combine and a Rock car (no "water bottle") that looked like it could have jumped off of a Frisco branch line in the 1930s, while the 749 running solo held down electric service on the main line and the 3142 went in circles.

When I arrived in the early afternoon the rain had stopped and a Car Department switch crew was down in Yard 13 at work. Above, they've just pulled the Detroit Peter Witt out of track 134 for the purpose of retrieving cabooses stranded behind it. The cabooses will be needed next weekend for the caboose train, of course. The Witt is waiting for its slot on track 131, which will be opened up when the crane is repaired and Shaker Heights 18 can be moved to Barn 7, but in the meantime it's in the way. The Witt has narrow wheels and is prone to derailing so a bunch of people were watching the wheels at frogs and switch points.

I decided I wasn't helping much in switching cabooses so I went back to the car shop to get some tools. While I was there, I saw this Ohio Brass trolley catcher disassembled on the bench. Last weekend this was discovered while we were going through spare parts. It's exactly what the 205 needs (though of course the 205 needs two so we're still short one); what it has now are OB retrievers which are much bigger. Over the previous week Richard and the other guys had disassembled this catcher, cleaned it up, and primed it.

After that I spent a while sanding down the belt rail of the 18. I managed to do the entire right side of the car. I'm a bit conflicted on whether to strip or just sand the window posts but I'm leaning towards stripping them, which will mean breaking out the heat gun. After that's all done it will be ready for some primer along the windows. While I was working on this Greg was stripping duct tape residue off of the car's windows and posts. Of course in my usual negligence I failed to get any photos of this work, but I did snap a photo of Joel happening by with a makeshift "bumping post." This was modeled after the one we use to keep the CA&E cars from running into the 150 on track 84. With the Peter Witt now buried behind a string of cabooses on track 134, Joel decided that we might not want anyone trying to couple a caboose to it through its headlight. So this will help keep the cabooses in their place until the Witt can be moved to its permanent home on track 131. We'll have to add "track bumper" to the Van Dorn uncoupling devices and CA&E trap lifters already on the list of patent-pending Hicks Co inventions.

Anyway, I headed back over to Barn 4, and what did I find there but a bunch of crooks! Well these crooks are actually light poles for 50th Avenue 'L' station, which Greg was working on priming. They get bolted to the wooden poles spaced out along the length of the platform and have pie-pan lights attached to them to light the platform.

Joel said he had something to show me in one of the storage cars, so I went along and got to see this interesting bit of history. It's a panel off of a Kansas City Public Service streetcar (or bus, or something) and has the intricate KCPS "The Scout" logo on it. You never know what you'll happen up on at IRM. And that takes us to the infamous material yard.

"Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot..." Richard does his best Captain Ahab from atop a set of stairs in the material yard, pointing out among the piles of iron. The Track Department, among others, has initiated a major cleanup of the material yard. Typically "cleanup" plus "piles of rusty iron" equals "scrapping" so Joel sent Richard and me out to start marking with spray paint anything the Car Department wants to ensure doesn't get cut up. There's a lot of interesting (anyone looking for a pair of Brill 27A1 trucks?) and/or useful (spare GE 73 motors for the 604) stuff out there so it was a pretty fascinating expedition. I think these stairs may have been used so that visitors could get into the cab of L&A 99 when it was on display just east of the depot on the now-gone pocket track.

While I'd been sanding on the 18, Richard reassembled the OB trolley catcher and got it working. So that's one thing on the 205 that will be fully serviceable! I put a first coat of Indiana Railroad orange on it; once it's all painted up I'll install it on the car. Bob Bruneau would be happy: it always bothered him that we didn't have the correct OB catchers for the 205.

Besides the cabooses being switched around in Barn 13 there were other things going on. Notably, Nick and Thomas took the 251 for a couple of trips around the car line to further test out the new main journal bearing, which had been scraped by Zach following earlier unsuccessful tests. Unfortunately it will still need more work but progress is being made. Doodlebug Bob was also doing some machining work and John, back from Florida, was doing upholstery work in the wood shop. Tim wasn't out but he's continuing to make progress on the 1754; above is a shot of it in the evening, by which time the sun had come out.