Tuesday Activities

Tuesday is relatively calm day at the Museum, but there was still some interesting activity.  For various reasons today worked out better for me than tomorrow, so let's see what's happening.

You might have noticed that the non-operating cars in the display barns tend to collect dirt and bird droppings and so on.  Gregg Wolfersheim has been working for B&G, cleaning up these cars to make a better impression on our visitors.  Here he is spraying the Great Western plow with a pressure sprayer.  After doing all the eligible cars in Barn 8, he washed windows.  

Everybody agreed that there was no need to do this to the CA&E wood cars.  I certainly wouldn't want high-pressure spray forcing water into all the available cracks and joints.

Gregg has now finished Barns 6, 7, and 8, and we can only hope people notice the difference!

Last Saturday when I coupled the 309 to the 308, two problems became apparent.  The coupler at the #1 end of the 309 was replaced last year, because the original one was bent.  But the pin that came with it was somewhat bent, as seen below at left.  Commercial Metals must have been banging those cars around like there was no tomorrow.  I hadn't expected this, but the pin was bent enough that it started working its way up out of the hole!  It would be insane not to do something.

Luckily I had another pin in stock, and was able to attach it to the coupler with little difficulty.

The other problem was a leak between the two control pipe gladhands.  The rubber fittings become old and brittle, and start to leak.  I tried swapping a couple of hoses around to find two that would work together, then gave up in disgust.  We probably need to make some new rubber pieces.  The control pipe gladhands are a different design from the normal sort, so this is a custom job.   This needs to be fixed if we're going to have two-car trains in service.

Well, then it was time to switch out all four cars so the 36 would be accessible for inspection.  For a switch move, at least, I can run the 308 and 309 together without the control pipe connection.   Here are some pictures taken during the switching.

And after about two hours' work, of various sorts, the desired result is that the 36 is staged at the door.

Then I finished up a few miscellaneous parts of the 319 inspection.   The Museum was semi-open, I guess you'd say.  Here I got a picture of a group of photographers taking pictures of Yard 5.  They politely offered to get out of my way, until I explained they were part of the picture.  They all have much nicer equipment than I do.

Pete Galayda was there in the morning, but I didn't get a picture of him.  Jeff and Norm were working on the 28 and Tim was working on the 1754.

And Gerry was there sorting parts in the material yard, and so forth.   All in all, a good day.