Bearing progress

 Frank writes...

I was unexpectedly able to make it out for the afternoon on Wednesday and, against all odds, made some significant progress on the 18's mechanical side.

This was because Joel and Jeron were around to explain how to work on balky journal bearings. The 18 was still on the inspection pit, which turned out to be very beneficial. We ran it back and forth on the pit lead, identified the journal that had been "singing" (#2L), and got to work. Jacking up the journal box and inspecting axle and journal revealed some tiny, almost imperceptible scoring on the axle, so we used a wooden block and sandpaper to sand the axle a bit. Then there was the bearing itself; above Jeron is blueing the bearing surface prior to another short test run to identify high spots. Gregg was around to help with scraping the bearing a bit, and after just one round of scraping it seemed much better. So we took the car around the streetcar loop twice, making regular stops to check bearing temperature. While the #2L bearing was getting a bit warmer than the others, we are cautiously optimistic that it just needs some "running in" and that the tough work on this particular issue is behind us. Fingers crossed! A huge thank you to Joel and Jeron for making all of this progress possible.

Jeron also removed and cleaned the 18's motorman's valve on Sunday, which fixed a small leak through while in apply. There is still a small stem leak but that will hopefully be straightforward to fix. The number of noticeable air leaks on the car is getting very small, with the whistle valve probably the most significant item to be addressed on that front. And Joel also helped in switching the 1374 and 4391 out of the way so that we could put the 18 back in Barn 7 at the end of the day. Unfortunately I neglected to get any photos of the 18 while it was outside running. Oops.

As usual, Joel was working on a number of different projects. Here he's heating up the department's go-to tow bar to straighten it out. This tow bar really takes a beating sometimes. Joel was working on a few different projects throughout the day and I also briefly encountered Victor from the Freight Car Department and Tim, still racing along making progress on the 1754.