Sunday operations

Frank writes...

I barely took any photos on Sunday but of course Chuck was out and was taking good photos so I'm off the hook! I was conductor on the 308 and 319 with Jeff Obarek as the motorman. The crowd was light, even lighter than on Saturday, with the similar heat (highs in the mid-90s with the heat index up around 105 I think) and predictions of heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon keeping people away. Oh well. There were still visitors and they certainly enjoyed the parade of equipment that was out. There were six trains running: the CA&E cars, CRT cars, steam coach train, and caboose train pulled by ComEd 4 on the main line; CSL 144 on the streetcar line; and IT 101 doing shuttle trips.

Here are the CA&E cars on Station Track 1. Beyond the train is the 101 and if you look closely in the distance you can see the 144 passing through Car Line Junction. Usually we run Jefferson Street Shuttle trips out of 50th Avenue but of course the 101 isn't very conducive to doing that. So Joel, who was running the car with Thomas as his motorman, just ran out of Station 1; he'd follow one of the revenue main line trips out and short-turn at the east switch, heading back to the west end and straight back into the station. That seemed to work pretty well.

More of the same. The CRT wood cars, with Bob Opal and Andy Sunderland as the crew, were brought out in the morning as a three-car train with the 24, 1268, and 1797. But almost immediately the 24 developed a fault and had to be set out on track 41 east. It turns out that insulation between two of the control wires in one of the conduits failed, leading to a reverser failure that meant the car would only go in one direction. Once it's fixed the car will be back in service.

When we returned around 2pm from our third main line trip, it was reported that a line of thunderstorms was approaching from the southwest and due in around 3:30. Rather than risk another main line trip at 2:15 we swapped places with the 101; they did a main line trip and we did a short-turn shuttle trip to Jefferson Street at 2:25. Then the train went straight to Barn 8 thanks to some deft dispatching by David Streeter. And it's a good thing too - an advance line of showers had popped up and passed through about three minutes after the cars made it indoors. An hour later, as predicted, heavy rains came through and drenched everything that was still out on the railroad.

By that time Joel was hard at work on a repeat of Saturday night's cookout in the car shop. While we were hanging around after dinner, Scott and I started looking over the C-21 controller that was donated on Saturday, soon joined by Richard. It's definitely more complete than our other examples and, most notably, still includes the large torsion spring on the handle shaft. See here:

Richard figured out that there's a spring-loaded button that engages and disengages the direct gearing between the handle shaft and the contact drum. At the start of the video the direct gear is disengaged, so the handle shaft (above the torsion spring) is advanced with the handle while the contact drum (geared to the lower plate that he is holding from advancing) stays motionless until released. At :08 the button is depressed, so the entire controller is "solidified" and functions like a normal C-6 or something; Richard tries holding the lower plate steady but can't. Then the button is released again and you can see how the handle doesn't advance the contacts until the pressure - in this case, provided by hand - is released.

But wait, there's more. That video showed the contact drum advancing almost immediately once the pressure was released. But there are small dogs underneath a gear on the contact drum (Richard is fiddling with them at the very start of the second video, above) that seem to affect how the contact drum advances. With these moved, the contact drum advances more slowly, with the speed controlled by a flywheel inside the black-painted cast housing at the top of the contact drum.

I'm pretty curious exactly what the thinking behind all of this was, particularly the function of those dogs shown in the second video. My best guess is that perhaps there were two different ways to automate the car's acceleration: either by limit relay (this would be shown in the first video) or by simple timing, with the flywheel controlling the rate at which the contact drum advanced (as in the second video). The CA&E controlled acceleration using a limit relay under the car but Richard had mentioned that simple timing was another way of doing it. Any thoughts?