Wheaton Shop

 Frank writes...

I was out at the museum for a full day of work on Sunday. When I arrived, I discovered that the "second shift" guys had moved the 309 and 319 over to the inspection pit. Thank you to everyone who helped with this - it saved quite a bit of time Sunday.

I hadn't realized this until last weekend, but current museum guidelines for sanitation have limited electric trains to equipment that 1) has leatherette seats (as opposed to cloth) for easy wiping down, and 2) can be loaded from ground level (as opposed to 'L' cars) so that the mobile metal staircases don't need to be used. That has left us with exactly one two-car electric train, CA&E 409-431. But there's another two-car train waiting in the wings that meets these requirements: the 309 and 319. So my goal was to get these cars inspected so that they can be cleared for service.

It was a long day, but that's pretty much what I was able to do, though I didn't get to some items like interior check-ups. The 319 in particular had some seat cushions taken out for painting work a few weeks ago, so it will need a bit of assembly, but that should be quick. Above, the 309 is shown sticking out the door while its west truck is over the pit. Things like comm condition, pole piece clearance, contactors, and other items were checked from the pit.

Then at the end of the day the cars were lubricated. Many thanks to Joel, Nick Espevik, and others for helping out with inspection work. These two aren't ready for service quite yet. Besides a bit of interior cleanup, they also need yellow rope so that alternating rows of seats can be roped off, plus they weren't on the usual "car cleaner" rotation so we'll need to do a cursory wipe-down. But within a couple of weeks we should have two MU trains that we can alternate for our visitors.

At the end of the day the train made it back over to Barn 8. The bright automotive red paint on the 319 really is striking in direct sunlight.

There was a lot of progress being made on other fronts, too. Right now there are so many CA&E cars being worked on, and so many different volunteers working on them, it feels like Wheaton Shop! Above can be seen the outboard air tank from the 451, which Richard spray-painted black. After one more coat it will be ready to go back onto the car, though that will wait until we can order a replacement for the inboard air tank that had a hole in it. I also want to thank all of the "second shift" guys for bringing the 451 over to the pit Saturday evening to remove the bad-order inboard tank and the car's air compressor, which will need some valve work. Later Saturday evening the 451 was deposited in Barn 6, down the track from the three serviceable steel cars.

Here's the 453 in the roof booth. While Richard and Nick (and Zach, who was also working in operations for the day) were helping to handle the crowds, Greg was hard at work for pretty much the entire day removing tacks from the tack molding on the south side of the 453. That's a big help in moving that car's roof project along. Joel was working on a number of different things, hunting down tools, repairing shop equipment, and he also moved the 451's air compressor - removed the previous evening - into the lean-three.

Scott was also out, working on CTA S-105, and I grabbed a quick photo of him drilling holes in a new piece of steel for the locomotive.