Five Just Wouldn't Be Enough

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

Tuesday Progress

Another busy Tuesday at the Museum, and the car shop in particular, results in the following updates.  Let's see, today we'll take them in numerical order.

First is the Michigan Electric 28.  Norm Krentel and Rich Castagna were continuing their work on the front of the car.  Here's the floor of the baggage compartment:

And the front panels:

Here Rich is drilling holes for bolting the parts together.

Helped by Norm:

Next is the Indiana Railroad 65.  Jon Fenlaciki continues working on the roof.  Below is the hole where the conduit for the 600V supply passes into the car.

Next, John Sheldon and Gerry Dettloff continue on the Fox River 306.  There's plenty of welding and grinding to do.

And John continues to make progress with the floor:

Before and after...  The "new" piece was made about 30 years ago, and John located it and started to install it.  It helps brace the floor at the end of the car.

Finally, interior painting on the CA&E 319.  As you have read, the 451 has some serious mechanical problems to address, so I took some time to start repainting the interior of the 319.  It's hard to tell from these pictures, but when the car is outside in operation, flaws in the paint scheme show up that aren't obvious when it's inside the barn.  So there's more painting to be done as time permits.

This door, for instance, looks much better than it did before.

That's it for today, but don't go away.  When IRM news breaks out, you'll read about it here first!

One step forward, two steps back

Frank writes...

Sunday was our second day this year open to the public, Saturday having been the official "opening day" (though the previous weekend we were open to members only). The last time we started train operations for the year in July was 1966! But I digress.

I spent part of my afternoon helping out with operations, notably running a trip with the CA&E steel train shown above to give regular motorman Paul Cronin a break. In the foreground is one of the hand sanitizer stations that have been set up around the property.

Besides the CA&E train, the 4391 and a three-car diesel coach train were also operating plus Zach was running training trips on the 415. All trains were running at 25% capacity to maintain social distancing. Boarding was tightly organized; between the train crews and volunteer platform staff, there were plenty of IRM people around to keep things orderly and keep the public informed. By and large it seemed like the visitors were happy and there were enough of them that a couple of trips ran right about at capacity.

While I was up at the depot I also got to look at the progress being made in preparation for repainting the building. The dispatcher's office has had the siding around the bay window replaced and there are numerous other spots where repairs have been made.

I also got a chance to gawk at the recent changes to the displays in Barn 3. The old lineup at the west end was Susan Marie-99-Ely-Lake City but the new lineup is Inglehome-Lake City-Ely-X38, that last one being the CGW Russell plow shown here. Track 34 will now host a train of restored freight cars, which will be an improvement as heretofore most of our restored freight cars have been squirreled away off exhibit. The display is still a work in progress and the plow will indeed end up at the west end of the track, not back 20'-30' as it is now.

Behind the plow are the B&O wagon-top boxcar, the IC side-door caboose, the Santa Fe stock car, and the recently-acquired FGEX wooden reefer.

The plan, as I understand it, is for most or all of these cars to eventually be opened up for visitors to walk through. They'll also have historic displays explaining various aspects of railroad freight service and freight train operation. The IC caboose isn't open, but the lights were on and attractive new signage was visible through the windows. This whole exhibit will really be a big step forward in our educational mission when it's done.

At the east end of the string is the FGEX reefer, which Gregg and others are currently working on repainting. Apparently we were able to obtain lettering diagrams from the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, which has an identical car (check it out here). It sounds like one more freight car, and possibly also a locomotive, will be added to the string of cars currently on track 34 to complete the display.

But now it's back to the real work, and the reason for this post's title. Following installation of the 451's air compressor, the "second shift" shop guys were able to hook up the air piping and try the compressor out. Unfortunately it didn't make any air, so Dan F took apart the valves. These were pretty gummed up but he was able to get them pretty well freed up. So they tried the pump again, and success! - it made air. But it only went up to about 60 pounds because the inner of the two main reservoir air tanks under the car has a hole in it. So that's going to need to be replaced. And the pump has a bad knock, so it will need to be taken back off the car to have the pins and bushings worked on. But the most irritating new discovery involved the car's trucks and motors. The east truck (as the car sits now) seems okay, and its motors meggered alright. But the megger readings on the motors in the west truck were rather low, which is not great. The brush holders in that truck are also somewhat corroded; one had a stuck brush while another had a broken brush spring. The second wheel set from the west end of the car also has a noticeable dish in the wheel tread - nothing that can't be fixed with our portable wheel lathe, but just another item to add to the checklist.

The full extent of the work required isn't entirely clear yet. The plan is to pull the brush holders from the west truck and give them a thorough going-over, and we can also put light bulbs in the motors to try and drive out any moisture and see if we can get the megger readings up. In the meantime the pump will be removed for work. And the job on Sunday was to take the air tanks off of the car so we can source replacements. The outer air tank will be hydro-tested to see whether it can be reused, and we were able to get that tank off after pulling the car out the door. Many thanks to Joel, Nick, Greg, and Richard for helping with this! We ran out of time as a squall line approached so we didn't get the inner tank off the car, but we know that one is bad anyway so it doesn't need to be hydroed.

So, stay tuned. Hopefully over the next few weeks we will have good news regarding air tank replacement, compressor repair, and motor work.

There's switching the easy way, and then there's switching the hard way, demonstrated here by Jeron and Zach. Look to the Future With Timken Tapered Roller Bearings! For further information write The Timken Roller Bearing Company, Canton 6, Ohio.

Of course we can't end without a few update photos of other Car Department projects. Work has resumed on Michigan Electric 28 and the front end is going back together nicely. It has recently reacquired front dash sheets.

And the current occupant of the "roof booth" on track 42 is CSL 3142, which has a shiny new coat of brown paint on its roof and a nice fresh coat of carmine red on its letterboard.

All Mesopotamian and Babylonian Breeds Welcome

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

(The image caption says "Dogs of War - Nineveh - 668 B.C. - British Museum")

San Carlo Opera Company

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

Our Desire

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

We should also mention that everyone here at Hicks Car Works also strives to act like we have only one reader, as we figure that sooner or later that's inevitably going to be true!

Compressor In Place

The Museum was busy on Saturday, with a test opening for visitors limited to members only.  This was mainly to provide a dry run for operations with all of the pandemic-related restrictions in place.  Somebody who was actually involved can probably tell us more about how things went, but apart from rain in the early afternoon it seemed to go smoothly enough.  And there were several shop projects in progress, as usual, which I didn't get any pictures of.

In the morning I was able to change out the roof fuse box on the 451, replacing it with one in good condition which we had in stock.   Below, before and after:

And when permanently installed, it looks like this, with the usual strange green glow:

But the main project was installing the newly-rebuilt compressor on the 451.  This was not a simple project, and among other things we were greatly helped by being able to borrow a small forklift from the Steam Department.  Here Joel is bringing the compressor on a pallet up to the front of track 41.

Most of the time I was too busy to take pictures.  But during a lull in the action I got to make a test installation of one of the frames I made for the roll sign box.  The red doesn't quite match, and it will of course need another coat, but we will have several things at each end of the car that need repainting in the correct red.

Besides help from Joel and Richard, special thanks goes to Jeron Glander and Jeff Calendine, who did most of the work in actually getting the compressor into position.  It took longer than expected, but in the end the compressor is mounted correctly.  I hooked up the electrical connections and tested it briefly, and it worked well.  The air piping is not yet complete, so I wasn't able to pump up the car, but that will happen next time.

So that's a major step forward in getting the car operational.

New Aurora Terminal

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

Beware Clowns Riding Giraffes

Our friend Ray Piesciuk has been scanning CA&E bulkhead advertising cards (the ones hung in the bulkhead windows between the cars' smoking and main compartments) from the Julie Johnson collection. A few duplicates have been passed along to us so that we can either use them in the cars or easily get them copied. The batch he's working on currently seem to mostly be from 1939-1940. These have now been posted in a special section on the fascinating www.irm-cta.org archive site Ray and Julie manage.

Tuesday Report

Nary a day goes by that something important doesn't get done in the car shop.  I didn't get many pictures of what other people were doing, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  So we'll look at the 451.  I started by attaching a trolley rope at the #1 end of the car, with the aid of the lift.

Then I installed the nice newly-painted red retriever at this end.  By the way, I noticed that this mounting bracket has two set screws (white arrows) which I've never seen before, I think.  I really don't know why these would ever be necessary; they'd just make it harder to change out a retriever.  The bracket at the other end doesn't have them.  Another mystery.

And I spent some time putting more oil in the compressor, which should be ready for installation on the car soon.  I also checked the electrical connections with a light box, and everything should be OK.

Frank left two repainted windows for the 18 in the shop, and I took them over and installed them in the car.

Now, at least all of the slots on the sidewalk side have windows in them.  The car has been turned around so the door faces the sidewalk.  One of the windows is still an extra from the 318, so it should probably be let down into the pocket before moving the car.

Then I wire-wheeled and cleaned up the threshold plates.  These had been painted black for the green and yellow paint scheme, but they certainly need to be red.  So today they got white primer.

Tim Peters and John Sheldon were working on their projects, but I didn't get any pictures.  Meanwhile, we recently acquired a bigger and better cutoff saw from Norfolk Southern, and Buzz is working on putting it together.  He says that it was originally bought by the New York Central, and then became Conrail property, so the brackets below were painted Conrail blue.  He's refurbishing the frame the saw will mount on.  It's quite heavy.

And by the end of the day the frame looks like this:

Anyway, I also showed him what we were doing on the compressor, and he had some black primer on hand, so he helped by painting the little plate that we recently installed.

Much better.  Thanks!

Then I got a spare fuse box for the 451 roof.  It needs some work, which I hope the second shift will be able to take care of for me.

And that's just a sampling of what was going on.   Bob Olson was working on the new switch for Barn 12, and Dave Conrad continued his work on the I-R engine.  I can only imagine on a day like today it was emitting plenty of IR.  And there were other people at work too.  I just can't go around and find them all.  Anyway, stay tuned for news and updates on the Museum's plans for reopening!