Forward progress

Frank writes...

Sunday was a constructive day. It took longer to remove the second tail light from Shaker 18 than I had hoped. All of the screws had to be drilled out, as with the first one, but one of them just didn't want to "let go." Richard Schauer helped out with this and finally we were able to get the thing off. A "before" view taken from inside the car:

And here's the "after" view of the light housing sitting on the bench:

This one was definitely more rusted out than the first one, and that one was pretty bad. But the light bulb and fixture appear undamaged. The cast ring on this second light was put into Evapo-Rust before I grabbed a photo of it, but it has a big chunk that broke off of it at some point in the distant past (judging from paint evidence, probably before the car even went to Trolleyville). Oh well.

And painting on the first tail light housing was completed with a coat of silver on the inside. Thanks to Joel for sourcing some silver spray paint.

The exciting news, however, took place two tracks over from the 18 on the Electroliner. On Saturday evening, the "second shift" crew working on the mechanical portions of the train got the three air compressors and three MG sets tested and working again. Voila!

The train pumps up, the brakes seem to work as intended (though the trucks are still disconnected), the MG sets run, and various ancillary features are also working or partly working. These include the heat and blowers in the A and B cars as well as lights in the A, B, and C cars. The lights in the A1 car haven't yet been wired back into place by the crew rehabbing the interior of that car.

Nick demonstrated some of what was tested. The brakes on the train are pretty unusual. They're electro-pneumatic and run at 110 pounds brake pipe pressure (the governors, of which there are two for redundancy, cut out at 135 lbs and cut in at 125 lbs!). The brake valve has a self-lapping straight air portion, then automatic, then emergency. Richard has posted a description in the comments of how exactly this works.

Here are some of the gauges over the motorman's head and to his left, as shown in the previous photo. We're pulling minimal amps and we're not going anywhere, but the main res is at about 128 pounds, the brake pipe is just over 110 pounds, and we've taken a 30 pound reduction. Moving the brake handle to the end of the self-lapping sector gets you about a 50 pound reduction.

There's plenty left to do, but a lot of progress is being made. Among the tasks on the to-do list are obtaining air hoses to the trucks (the ones that came from the rebuilder a couple of years ago are too short), hooking up the motor leads, and dealing with a couple of leaky magnet valves in the reverser and switch group. But it's looking promising.

Nick pointed out something in the cafe-bar car, or B car, that we hadn't realized previously. You'll note in this view of the bar that there are two little "cans" mounted in the ceiling on either side of the vent register. We'd known about these for years but it wasn't clear why they were there: they're little blue-ish lights pointed at the ceiling. The one on the left is a little dimmer but they're both on.

Here's a better view. Fortunately, one of them has a label on the bottom that's still kind of legible, so Zach got work doing some research.

The label says "Air-Tron - Air fresh as the dawn." It appears that these are UV lights and the idea was that they would clean the air in the cafe car. That's why they're shielded from direct line-of-sight and, presumably, why they're located between the griddle and the dining area. Neat.

In other, non-Shaker Heights, non-Electroliner news, I reinstalled the folding sign latch on the end of the 309 that we had removed for taking measurements. We're getting a new one 3D printed so we will see how that works. Right now the 308 has reproduction latches made from commercially available bits and pieces but we'd prefer to replace them with these nice cast types if possible.

The Mylar we ordered also arrived so I traced the lettering off of the destination sign box from the 415. Nick was working for part of the day on shaping new copper flashing for the 415's destination sign too.

Greg and Zach spent the day working in the Highwood carpentry shop, making big pieces of wood into slightly smaller pieces of wood using the table saw, radial arm saw, planer, and jointer. Early in the day they were guided by our master carpenters, Tim and Buzz, who themselves were also working on their own woodworking projects. I didn't get a picture of any of our carpenters at work but here's a pile of some pieces of ash. These will end up becoming a set of four new corner doors for North Shore 757.

In addition to all of this, Richard was working on reaming holes in the new brake beam for Sand Springs 68 so that bushings can be pressed in while Joel spent a while sorting parts in one of our storage cars. It's not a glamorous job but somebody's got to do it.

What's that, you say? You already got your tax refund and you haven't the foggiest idea of what to do with your incredible influx of wealth? We know how you can make a difference!