In dire bearing straits

Frank writes...

As my father described, we brought the 18 out again on Sunday after putting new waste in the bearing that had been running warm for its initial outing, which was the #4R journal. The goal was to wye the car as it was sitting in Barn 7 back-to-back with the 4391. This meant that the two cars were playing "trolley pole jousting" which is undesirable if you can avoid it! So we took it around the wye, the 18's first voyage under power through Station Track 1, and then over to the pit lead for checking on motor armature bearings. Unfortunately a second journal started singing a little just as we got to the pit lead. Aargh!

One bit of good news is that Zach found the car's headlight, which had been stowed for safe-keeping when the 18 was acquired. We need to check the wiring to make sure the headlight circuit is good but it looks nice on the car as shown here. Anyway, it turned out that the #2L journal was the one now acting up. It had the same marginal-looking waste as the #4R journal had started out with, so I got to work on quickly making up some new journal bundles and soaking them for a few hours in journal oil. Below you can see what was pulled out of the box. We've seen worse, but ideally you want your waste to be in cohesive bundles so that the strand ends aren't trying to grab and ride up in between the axle and the bearing.

We also started looking at motor armature bearings and ended up replacing the waste on the first one of those we found, too. So replacing waste could be an ongoing project for a while on this car! But we will see. I owe a big debt of gratitude to Joel, Richard, Greg, and Thomas, all of whom spent quite a bit of time helping with bearing work and other tasks on the 18. I also brought out a couple of windows that my father replaced and put them in the car, but I didn't have enough time to sand and prime them like I had hoped.

It occurred to me that I wasn't sure I had posted any recent photos of the rear end of the car, so here it is. We haven't been able to open up the marker lights because the cast rings that hold in the lenses are rust-jacked into place. That will be a project at some point.

In other news, a big Thank You to Steve Heister and Walt Stoner of the Northern Ohio Railway Museum for sending us paint mix formulas for the grey and cream. This livery was known on Shaker Heights as the "Bankers scheme" because an earlier version sans red belt rail was instituted in the early 1930s when the line went bankrupt and came under the control of the banks. NORM has matched the colors to good-quality original samples so this ensures that the car will look right when we repaint it. But car 18 needs your help! We are out of money, even for relatively inexpensive things like paint, and we need donations to keep this car's restoration moving along! Donations can be send to Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 18 - and thank you.

Other projects were being worked on too. Besides the 'Liner guys over in Barn 7 and Zach (and others) making good progress on the 757, Thomas was working on the revenue 4000s for most of the day. He got 4410 and 4412 made up into a train and then brought over some leaky air system components from the 4290 to overhaul those. Richard, Greg, and Joel seemed to be spending most of their time running new wiring to the controller at one end of the 1268. This failed a little while back due to a short in the conduit, so new conduit has been run and now the controller is wired back up. And if that isn't enough progress, mid-afternoon Scott Greig showed up and was working out in the barn doing metal work on the CTA steeplecab, S-105. Joel pointed out that every car in Barn 4 right now is in active restoration, a few of them - like the 451, 28, and 306 among others - seeing more work than they have in years.

And finally, this week's quiz: what is this thing? Hint: it's not homemade, it was commercially available.

ANSWER: Olin was correct - the mystery object is a fuse puller. It was made by Brush Electric, not to be confused by the Brush Electric in Britain that made electric motors and control equipment.