Saturday Part Deux

 Frank writes...
As mentioned previously, I was out Saturday in place of my usual Sunday appearance. Joel had brought the 18 over to the pit before I arrived so work commenced immediately.

There were a couple of things I had in mind to work on. One of those, looking at journal bearings, didn't get done (though we do have a singing journal we'll need to look at). But the other was needle-chipping the right side panel on the front end of the car, shown above, which just looks really ugly. For whatever reason, most of the paint on the car is fine but on this panel it's all falling off.

After needle-chipping it looked like this. Progress!

And by the end of the day it was wire-wheeled and primed. As you can tell, there is some deterioration around the edges; for the time being this will be addressed with body filler but in the long-term plan this will be one of the areas of the car to see steel replacement. You can help - click here to donate online to the 18 project! It's easy, and all the cool kids are doing it!

On the mechanical side, Jeron replaced a couple of air pipe unions that had been leaking, including one that had been making a tremendously annoying whine whenever the brakes were applied. This was extremely helpful. He also tightened up the connection going into the pump and we installed a vent pipe from the triple valve that had been missing for some reason. This caused the brakes to vent into the car which was pretty loud.

And thanks too to Bill Wulfert, who spent some time working on the destination sign box. He figured out that the previous Cleveland Railways-esque destination sign (visible in the second photo of this post) was just a printed piece of card stuck into the box. Behind it was the car's actual roll sign. So the 18 is now properly signed for a Shaker Heights destination. I also scraped all of the duct tape residue off of the sign glass, which markedly improves the car's appearance.

There was plenty of other progress, too, much of it already recounted. Dan was working on some truck components earlier in the day and then in the afternoon he was working on an H-type brake valve for the Pennsy bobber. Tim and Bill were working on 1754-related projects, as usual; above Tim is peeling vinyl stencils off of a new destination sign for the car.

Richard, as previously shown, spray-painted the (usable) old air tank for the 451. Here it is in all of its completed glory.

I didn't get a chance to talk with Greg Ceurvorst, but it's pretty easy to tell he's on the property from the beautiful Hudson Hornet parked outside of Barn 6.

And while I was wandering around I also encountered the tail end of the switch move pictured previously. Here the Shay was crossing Central Avenue shoving the 975 south with the sun low in the sky. This, of course, is the less interesting side of the Shay but it was still impressive to see the engine in normal use doing normal switching.

And back at the pit lead, the 300 (visible in the reflection from the 18's end window a few photos up) had brought over that horrible-looking 4000 truck to have the motors pulled. It took a lot of fighting and they hadn't gotten all of the axle cap bolts out by the end of the day, but they were making a lot of progress with the use of a torch and 6' extender on the breaker bar. Above, Richard roasting nuts.

And finally, a photo submitted by our intrepid freelance photographer Jeron Glander. This is the museum's new HyRail bucket truck. We've wanted one of these for years - it was a particularly fond wish of the late Max Tyms - but the cost was always prohibitive. I'm told that someone (I'm not sure who) located this one for a very good price, and it will be quite useful in DC Line and Signal Department maintenance projects.