Car 18 runs!

Frank writes...

IRM now has another car in its operating fleet! Shaker Heights 18 was made operational and, after a few tentative voyages up and down the inspection pit lead, went for a couple of test trips around the streetcar line.

This progress was made much quicker than anticipated, but it's thanks to the hard work of the car shop regulars: Joel, Zach, Nick, Jeron, Greg, and Richard (I'm sorry if I left anyone out!). They brought the 18 over to the pit to look at the air compressor. That led to the compressor being dropped and new brushes being put in, but once it was meggered and reinstalled it was started up and surprisingly few leaks were found. All of the car's electrical circuits had already been tested so after the controls were sequenced the motor leads were hooked up and it was time for some testing.

Overall the car seems to run very nicely. There are a handful of small air leaks but nothing that can't be addressed. One bearing started to run a bit warm so we will repack that. We haven't been able to get the tail end marker lights working because the cast lens frames are cemented in place by rust and paint, but that will be taken care of.

The interior lights work, and we figured out what the big rotary switch on the wall does (unfortunately I failed to take a photo of it). There are six bulbs in the series and the rotary switch shorts out each of them in sequence so that you can cut a bad bulb out of the circuit. That not only means it's easy to identify which bulb went bad, but if you lose a bulb leaving Terminal Tower then you're not in the dark all the way out to Shaker Heights (there's only one circuit that provides the entire car's worth of interior illumination). Neat!

Obviously there's more to do on the car. A lot of it is cosmetic: the car badly needs a new paint job, and volunteers from the Northern Ohio Railway Museum have been contacted about the correct color formula. It will need some more windows repaired, and that work is underway; needs some new destination sign glass; a few air system fixes; and longer-term will need the interior gone over and refurbished, with refreshed paint and varnish. We are also missing one short bench seat cushion. But generally everything looks promising. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who got car 18 running!

As usual, other projects are making noticeable progress too. The lean-to was a regular Highwood Shops, with a few different North Shore efforts in evidence. Here is the old train door and the new replacement train door for MD car 213. It must be the train door because the only other doors on the car are big baggage doors!

And these are the new end windows for the 757. By the end of the day the holes for the hardware and mounting strips had been drilled and the windows were ready for installation once some welding work on the support frames is done.

The North Shore Bandit returns - this week Zach was cutting out new linoleum for the floor in the smoker of the 757. The car has this patterned white linoleum under the seats, with a red walkway down the center aisle bordered by narrow black linoleum strips. When IRM acquired car 757 from East Troy the smoker linoleum had been replaced by some 1970s-era stuff, so in 2012 that was pulled out. After a few years of dormancy the compartment is now acquiring a new, correct, floor.

Zach also snapped a photo of me wire-wheeling trolley base parts for the 451. Many thanks to Zach, Joel, and Richard, who helped get parts we need out of storage including roof fuse boxes, a trolley hook, and a new trolley base spring.

Speaking of stuff pulled out of storage, this intriguing item was found in one of our storage cars. It's a little sheet metal house, probably to be mounted on a line pole, and has a blue lens and a big switch handle poking out the bottom. Anyone know what it is?