Chilly Sunday

Frank writes...

As pleasant as Saturday was, Sunday was very chilly and windy. But it was still bright and sunny out, so why not spend the afternoon at IRM?

When I arrived around lunchtime, my first job was to do some work for the Steam Department. The CB&Q scale test car was recently retrieved from its spot atop some ties near Barn 8 and placed on the south end of the steam shop track. Various Steam Department personnel including Matthew Gustafson will be working on a cosmetic restoration of this unusual 1916 car and Tom Schneider asked me if I would trace the remaining lettering off of the car. What I was able to get was somewhat fragmentary, but combined with some good-quality photographs of the car, we should be able to repaint it without much trouble.

After that I spent a few hours sorting through spare parts, mostly stuff we acquired in 2010 as part of the Trolleyville acquisition. This wasn't very photogenic so I don't have any pictures, but I made a lot of progress. The goal is to consolidate our spare parts so that a bunch of CTA components, currently stored in the de-accessioned dark green 2000s, can be put into proper storage. That will allow one or both of those 2000s to be scrapped, which has been the plan for a number of years now. Joel has been working hard on this project too, transporting spare parts to their appropriate storage spots.

I also made a quick trip to Barn 7 to check out Van Dorn tight-lock couplers. Here we see the coupler at the east end of Chicago Surface Lines 9020, our center-entrance trailer. It's obviously a Van Dorn and according to a drawing here is likely a 1450. Intriguingly, it has an electrical "button box" on only one side of the coupler head. If you click this link and look at the third picture under the "unidentified tight-lock couplers" category, there's a coupler with a matching electrical connector on just one side of the coupler. And sure enough, from photos it looks like CSL cars had an electrical coupler on only one side of the coupler head - left side (looking head-on) for trailers, right side for motor cars. Interesting! The 9020 only has a coupler at one end so I hope we have a second one of these for the other end, if and when the car gets cosmetically restored.

And here's the Van Dorn 2350 coupler under Broad Street Subway 55. It looks just like the pictures from the Van Dorn collection showing these couplers when new. This is the west end of the 55; the east end of the car has a nifty MCB adapter that fits tightly over the "prow" of the Van Dorn coupler head.

There were a lot of other things going on, too. Zach and Thomas spent part of the day running the 749 for a photo charter (if you are interested in renting a car for an off-season photo charter, give the office a call - no promises, but money talks!). When I arrived, Dan and Greg (shown above) were doing final disassembly of the first CLRV truck. Virtually the entire truck frame had already been removed and the truck was just down to the motor, gearboxes, and wheel-and-axle sets.

By late afternoon, the view had changed. The wheel-and-axle sets from the first truck were separated from the motor and gearboxes and are now ready to ship out for regauging. The second CLRV truck, shown here, has now been moved into the "lean-three" for disassembly. But a lot of moving took place, with Dan, Greg, Good Nick, Joel (pictured), and Richard all spending the afternoon on the project. A bunch of things that were in the shop were moved around or moved out, including several air compressors. That opened up space for the truck seen behind Joel, which is the 4000 truck that was pulled out of the field back in August. Tim is going to work on rehabbing this truck over the winter so that it can be placed under the 1754.