Down to Brass Tacks

 Wednesday was another busy day, and as usual the car shop was one of the most popular places at IRM.  To start, let's ponder what the other guys are doing. 

Pete and Fritz continue their painstaking work on the interior of the 160.  Here the head of the Paint Department is finishing a door.

Lorne was working on various parts for the PCC truck, helped today by Paul Cronin who wandered in and was put to work.

Here Paul is polishing up some bearing surfaces.

Tim was working on the 1808, but I didn't get any pictures.  Finally, Buzz is making parts to replace a missing booth in the O'Mahoney Diner.  That's pretty interesting!

The seat frames are pretty complicated.

And here he demonstrates the use of a manual router.  This particular type was patented in '84.

And one of the freight car guys was asking me about the Trolleyville holes.  I explained that this occurred because they were trying to store a streetcar right next to an interurban.  This generally wouldn't happen on most electric lines (other than museums!) but there are exceptions.

Such as the Illinois Terminal -- step this way and look at the 415's trolley pole - I know it's hard to see in this dim light.

The 415 had to share trackage with interurban cars, and I feel sure they must have considered the possibility of punching a hole into another car's roof.  The 160 is a North Shore car, of course, but it's the same basic size as the IT's mainline equipment.  So we can see that the 415's base is mounted on a platform, and even when hooked down the pole is slanted up so it easily clears the interurban car's roof.  Problem avoided!

Finally, we'll look at what I was doing on the 460.  I removed the other detachable roof cable and stored it on the platform, then went to work on the trolley boards and saddles.  I removed the next two trolley boards, so that's two-thirds done, and then was able to remove about half of the saddles, mostly by chopping them apart.  The rusted old wood screws are nearly impossible to turn.  And there's always more canvas to pull off.  At this point it looks like this.

And I carted several loads of old canvas and wood out to the dumpster.

And switching back and forth, I also worked on cleaning up the tack molding on the north side.  When done, it looks like this.  Before starting, there are two layers of canvas to remove, each with a double row of tacks.  And it appears that the inner layer actually used brass tacks.

I asked Tim to take a look and he agreed that the moldings should be reusable with the right amount of epoxy.  He also thought the general roof structure was in remarkably good condition.

By the end of the day I had finished cleaning up the moldings as far as the word "Chicago", or four window sections, or two scaffold sections.  The work is going along well, and is less tiring than chopping up the roof boards.

So there's some satisfying progress in all directions.