Spring Forward

Frank writes...

Sunday was a beautiful early spring day, sunny and with a high around 50 degrees. The car shop was pretty busy. When I first arrived, I was greeted by a hole in the middle of Barn 4 where until recently our CTA steeplecab had lived.

The gap on track 42 allowed this nice view of the end of the 460, now in the "roof booth." Shortly after I snapped this, Joel and a pair of new volunteers reassembled the scaffold at this end of the 460 so that roof work can commence. Some track work at this end of Barn 4 is planned for later in 2022, so at some point the scaffold will need to be re-disassembled so that Michigan Electric 28 can be extracted from the east end of the barn, but for now the roof booth is back in business.

After a little bit of Bondo application on the 18 over in Barn 7 (not very photogenic) I got back to work on sanding windows on the 415. I've got a few more left to do but this little part of the project is nearly complete. Nick, who has likely put more time into the 415 repainting project than anyone else, was working on patching some wood in the end of the car prior to reaffixing the angled dasher.

After that, and a trip over to the bus garage to pick up another Scalzo history file (stay tuned!), it was back to work on Shaker Heights windows. One of the windows I removed last week needed some extra epoxy application, so those windows will wait a week before getting primed. But two other windows, shown here, received a coat of Bankers Cream and are now ready to go back into the car. Once the four windows currently in the shop are reinstalled, there will only be one "standard" window on the door side (plus the stationary window between the doors) left to repaint.

And at the end of the day I attacked the 36's air compressor cradle with a paint brush, so the cradle is now all in black paint and ready to be reunited with the compressor itself. Note to self: some of the bolts on this cradle need to be tightened.

So what else is happening? Well first, Zach took the 714 out for a test trip around the streetcar line. I grabbed the above photo of him in the cab of the car in Yard 6, and the below photos he took during the trip. The car really does look RIGHT with its lobster traps back in place. Below photos by Zach Ehlers.

And here's an in-service shot of the 714 in 1950 at Harrison Shops, courtesy of Scott Greig:

And what else was going on? Joel was sorting parts, and I briefly helped him take some stuff over to one of our storage areas. Later in the day, Greg and Nick worked on repairing one of the air hoses connecting two of the cars on the Electroliner. These units consist of two air hoses flanking a short U-shaped air pipe that hangs between the adjoining cars. In the tableau below, we have (L-R) Greg, Gregg, Bob, Nick, and Joel, as Greg and Nick run the hose clamp machine under the watchful eye of the boss. The other two guys (and yours truly) are on a Union break.

And as for this, Nathan and Mikey were working for part of the day to salvage a recent purchase from everyone's favorite purveyor of used cars. Don't worry - against all odds, by the end of the day it drove itself off the lot.