Light the lights

Frank writes...

Sunday was a gorgeous day; the hot, humid weather that seems to have hung over Chicago for months finally broke and the day was practically cloudless with a high right around 70. The steam engine was running, there were Army soldiers on-site to work with our Track Department, and all the water from last weekend had disappeared with no obvious damage. What's not to like?

When I first arrived, I turned my attention to Indiana Railroad 205, which - for a project that's done - never quite seems to be done. Earlier in the summer we discovered an Ohio Brass trolley catcher of the type that's correct for this car, so Richard cleaned it up and painted it orange. It just took me forever to get around to putting it on the car. Above is what the car's been wearing; OB retrievers, which are significantly larger than what it actually had on IR (though close to what it had both earlier, on Interstate, and later, in Portland).

And here it is with the correct OB catcher installed. This is the west end of the car; the east end of the car still has the incorrect OB retriever, but if we can get our hands on the correct-type catcher at some point then that will be put on the car. Fingers crossed.

After that I happened upon Good Nick, who was over at 50th Avenue working on getting the platform lights working. This is a long-running project; the station platform was completely rebuilt maybe ten years ago, but before that we believe that wiring issues meant the platform lights hadn't been used for a while. It's possible that it's been as long as 20 years since the platform lights were lit. But earlier this year a plan was finally approved for rewiring them to run off of the 600 volt DC line, as they would have originally, and over the summer the car shop guys have been steadily fixing up the components needed. Nick started working on the project and before long a whole group of us had joined in. Here, Nick is on the left and Greg on the right, securing some of the last "crooks" into place.

Once a few final brackets were installed to hold the crooks in place, we needed to run a few ground wires through them using a fish tape; all of the other wiring had already been run. This took longer than expected but once it was done we were ready to start installing the shades and fixtures, which go inside the shades. Above, Jeron (left) and Rich are shown along with a shade that has had the fixture installed. Each fixture has two light sockets which are on different circuits. These use street railway bulbs, since they run on 600 volts. Not shown is Bob Sundelin, who also helped on the project, and Max, who stopped by briefly to make sure we could correctly answer the question "how long is a piece of wire?"

Almost all of the crooks face away from the station house, but the four closest to the station alternate. Richard explained to me why that is: there are supposed to be wind breaks, basically just wooden slat walls, in between two of these pairs of posts, and the crooks face away from the wind breaks. I suppose those wind breaks will be the next thing to be installed on the platform once the lights are done.

Here's one of the lights, complete with its shade and fixture, wired in, and with light bulbs installed.

By the time everyone finished, around 7pm, it was starting to get dark but all of the lights had been wired in - including not only the platform lights but also some lights inside the station house and one fixture over the entry steps. The only things left to do are to connect some ground wires underneath the platform and then wire in the switch board, where the 600 volt feed will come in and where the big light switches will be located. The hope is that the lights may be working on Saturday for Member's Day, when we typically have night operations for museum members. If so it should be a pretty impressive display.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Right now the 36 and 309 are scheduled to operate on Saturday, but this may not happen! Why not, you ask? Because we don't have a conductor! Please contact Jim West to sign up if you are free on Saturday and would be interested in helping out.