Wednesday Report

Today we'll look at some of the continuing work on Fox River 306.  John Sheldon has been making good progress, with help from some of the other Car Dept. regulars.   Cleaning up the interior is seen here in a not very good picture.

John himself spent some time finishing up a replacement door for the 604.  It needed a groove milled into the bottom edge.

Chuck Meter and Lorne Tweed have been helping with restoring the seats in the car.

And they found a cash fare receipt from the AE&FR stuck inside, a nice souvenir indeed!

This appears to be for a trip from "Stop 34" to Geneva, a very short distance, probably only one or two miles.  Of course, the receipts don't show all possible stops, so the end points are only approximate.  These are always fun to look at, I think.

I continued work on electrical systems in the 451.  I recharged the batteries and put power to the MG set via a stinger.  It appears to work fine.  It wasn't necessary to plug the contactor in order to get the MG set running.  And the control system seems to operate properly; when the lights are turned off, the MG shuts down, and starts again when the lights are turned on.  As seen here:

Nick later helped me with lubing the MG set.  I wanted to test the control system, but both of the controllers have mechanical problems.  A couple of parts are missing from the #1 end controller, so the throttle won't close, and the key that slides inside the shaft is frozen at the #2 end, so neither one is usable right now.   But we have spare parts, so next time I'll start fixing them.  

 Meanwhile, here are some views of the contactor box.  Everything inside appears to be OK.

And many other things were going on, of course.  Preparations for HHR were well underway, but I didn't get any pictures.