Bleak Midwinter

Frank writes...

This past weekend was a rare winter weekend at home for me and I was able to head out to IRM on Sunday afternoon. Despite highs in the teens, most of the usual suspects were out there working in the car shop. When I first arrived I headed over to Barn 7 to check on Shaker Heights 18. Now that this car is in Barn 7, where it's under wire and on public display, we hope to begin working on it to repair and repaint the exterior. We also want to examine its mechanical and electrical condition with an eye towards future operation. But we need your help! The car's fund will need donations to make this work possible, so any contributions to Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 18 are greatly appreciated.

Anyway, I started out by helping Richard in figuring out a problem with one of the lighting circuits on North Shore 160. This gave me an opportunity not only to work in the warmth, since the car's heaters work just fine, but also to get a look at the beautiful refinishing work that Pete Galayda has been doing. This car never had its interior painted but it's always been "unrestored" with aged and alligatored varnish. Pete is going through and refinishing the interior piece by piece; this photo shows the newly-refinished and positively gleaming end bulkhead in the smoker.

And here's the other bulkhead in the smoker, looking towards the main compartment with the glass taped off. Pete has been doing this work while the car is still technically in service, so every so often he's been cleaning up what he's doing so that the 160 can go out on the railroad. It sounds like the early 2000s when Jack Biesterfeld was restoring the interior of the 308 in between operating days.

The lighting problem turned out to be pretty simple - a loose bulb in one fixture and balky threads in another that were leading to intermittent contact - so pretty soon the car was back to normal.

After that it was 50' along the track to the pit, where West Towns 141 is having more attention paid to its control system. The car has a PC control system that uses a cam controller, and getting the cam to operate just as intended has proven to be a bit of a headache. Note that a tent has been built around the pit so that warm air can be pumped in to keep the working conditions reasonably comfortable.

Here's the cam itself. The controller box and most of the components are from a Milan (Italy) car, while the cam shaft itself is from Boston. The latest issue is that the bearing keeper at the right end of the cam shaft cracked, so Richard and Good Nick brazed that up and reinstalled it. While they were doing that, I helped Joel out for a while with sorting and rearranging spare electrical parts in one of the storage cars. It's cold work but somebody's got to do it.

As always, there's plenty of other work going on. Zach, Greg, and Thomas were working on installing new end windows in North Shore 757, a car which is operational but has been partly disassembled for several years. Tim was over in the wood shop working on more seats for the 1754. By the end of the afternoon he had installed the rattan on the final seat for the car, but the work isn't quite done yet - all of the seats need a couple of coats of varnish. And further west in the "lean-three" was the second truck for the Cleveland PCC, shown here, which has been brought indoors for disassembly and rebuilding.

Train operation at IRM in the dead of winter is somewhat rare, but it's easier if it's in 1:48. Before everyone headed to dinner Zach broke out an O scale goods train. Right away!