Pit work sans pit

Frank writes...

Sunday was another day with more progress on the 18, thanks to the other guys in the shop who were of invaluable help. For most of the day Jack Rzepecki was working with me on the car, mainly on getting the last of the rebuilt brake linkage on the front truck installed. This was not easy work - we ended up having to drop one end of each of the two slack adjusters to free up some of the rigging, and then reinstall both of them afterwards. This meant crawling underneath the truck and trying to find space beneath the motor to swing a small sledge to drive pins out of the rigging. Stuff like this really makes you appreciate having an inspection pit! But the job got done and now the repaired brake rigging is all back together. Thank you Jack!! Thanks also to Nick and Greg, from whom we got an assist to reassemble everything.

But Jack wasn't done yet. In the afternoon and evening, he reinstalled the 18's whistle valve which he repaired. This was the last major air leak on the car (well, there's a bit of a stem leak in the brake valve but that shouldn't be a big issue to fix) so getting the car nice and airtight is a big step forward. Here Jack is shown in the cab of the car, framed both in the 18's window and in the reflection of the end of the 1374.

By the end of the evening everything was put back together and Jack installed a typical WABCO whistle as shown in the above photo, which he sent along. The 18 is now fully prepared for any grade crossings it may come across. A huge thank you to Jack for getting all of this done!

The color here came out awful, but you'll have to take my word for it that the two castings that make up the frame of the first of the 18's rear end marker housings are now the correct Bankers Grey color. The next step for this little project is to acquire some 18-gauge sheet metal (anyone know whether Menards/Home Depot/Lowes carry the stuff?) to build new "tin can" housings for these.

And if that's not enough happening on the 18, I got another update from Bill Wulfert on the car's roll signs:

After removing the cotter pin on the bottom right, I was able to pull that end out, and with a slight tug I was able to get the left gear end out. The sign, or what is left of it is kind of grim. There was almost nothing holding the top and bottom of the sign together, and it tore. The top roller was another story. The long cotter pin came out on the right, but the gear end wouldn't budge. I Kroiled the gear end, and went to the shop for a light hammer. After lots of tugging, it finally came out. Of course the sign roller is bigger than the opening. I had to remove the screw holding the sign light in place, in order to get the sign out of the box.

At the top of the roll is stamped "The Hunter Illuminated Car Sign CO."  "FLUSHING, N. Y."  "NOV 20 1944" "Made in U.S.A." 

MORELAND BLVD

SHAKER BLVD

VAN AKEN BLVD.

TERMINAL

CENTER ROAD

GREEN ROAD

I taped all of the loose pieces together, with a LOT of tape, so that you can view the sign. It will definitely require a new sign. Getting a new sign back into the car will be a challenge. The rollers to the sliding center doors are in view when working on the sign. It is all very compact, and I'm sure the repairmen hated working in that area.

Many thanks to Bill for his work on this! For the moment the side roll sign is on the bench in the wood shop with the other 18 parts but the next time I'm out I will stow it away safely inside the car. I put some more Kroil on the bolts that hold in the frame for this sign, which we will need to remove in order to replace a piece of broken glass. So working on removing that will be on the near-term to-do list.

Of course there was plenty of other stuff happening too. When I arrived, Zach, Greg, and Nick were working over at the Wagner trolley bus loop on removing the strings of Christmas lights from the span wires. Here Zach is in the bucket while the other two are on the ground.

And in other DC Line Department news, Joel showed off this collection of newly overhauled wood strains that were painted on Saturday by Dave Fullarton. The aforementioned trio completed their bucket truck work early in the afternoon and spent much of the rest of the day, together with Richard, working on reinstalling the electrical connections between the four sections of the Electroliner. Getting the 'Liner running again sometime in 2021 is a department priority. Zach also relayed that he had made more progress on the 757 including installing the bulkhead door between the smoker and main compartment. Joel spent much of his day replacing light bulbs and doing other department maintenance work.

And finally, in the evening I took a little while to idly look through some of the Van Dorn drawings that were donated last year by Larry Larson. There's some neat stuff in there, including a lot of fully dimensioned drawings of various coupler and draft gear components manufactured by Van Dorn. And there's this graph showing the results of tests conducted in November 1920 at the Armour Institute, which of course is now IIT. It shows how far apart the coupler heads of Tomlinson and Van Dorn tight-lock couplers spread as an increasing load was placed on them.

Here's a similar graph showing coupler face spread. Two lines are Tomlinsons; two are noted as "Van Dorn #4A / #17 pin / #17 link" which is Van Dorn link-and-pin design; and two are Van Dorn #1450 tight-lock couplers.

And there's this nifty assembly drawing of a tow-bar designed to fit a Van Dorn tight-lock coupler as used by the CSL. This type of coupler is what the trailers like our own 9020 had (the 9020 still has one of its Van Dorn couplers) and Van Dorn supplied special tow-bars that, from the looks of it, were designed to remain rigid with the coupler shank to allow a trailer to be towed by something equipped only with a tow-bar pocket. The note at bottom left also tells us that the CSL used #1450 couplers.

Today's trivia question (and no, I don't know the answer to this): other than the 9020 and a handful of Broad Street and Philadelphia-Delaware Bridge cars, are there any preserved electric cars that still have Van Dorn tight-lock couplers? Once you look closely, they're pretty distinctive, with a pointed "prow" that's cast into the coupler head rather than the Tomlinson design where the "knuckle" is pointed.