Sunday Update

Frank writes...

Sunday the weather was chilly, but above freezing, and it was nice and sunny. It was a beautiful day for Happy Holiday Railway and the event seemed to be running quite smoothly. Tickets are almost sold out for the two remaining weekends, so if you know anyone who might be interested, don't delay - get your tickets today!

As for me, when I arrived mid-afternoon I got right to work putting primer on the roof boards of the 18. The car's roof is generally in good shape, even though the canvas (and, presumably, wood) definitely dates back to Shaker Heights days and may even date back to Cleveland Interurban Railroad days.

I didn't get a photo of the ventilators at the front and center of the car once they were primed, but I did snap a picture of the rather short roof boards. The temperature isn't as critical for primer, but I'll want to wait until it's warmer in the spring to put a coat of tile red on all of this.

I also put a coat of primer on the front bumper of the car, which will get painted black. By the time I was done with this I was starting to lose daylight.

And here's that rear end window that I primed last week with a coat of cream paint. It will go back to the car for re-installation next week, and another window or two can come out for similar work.

So, what else was going on? When I first arrived, Track 40 had changed, as shown here. The IT caboose and UP boxcar are further east down the track, while the green CTA 2000 was moved to parts unknown. The 3142 is passing in the background in HHR service.

The big job for the weekend was to pull the motor out of the 160's truck that had an armature bearing burn up in October. All of the prep work for the lift had been done on Saturday, however it was discovered that of the 160's four motors, only the one with the bad bearing had angle-cut gears - the other three have straight gears - and (of course) our spare motors have straight gears. Rats. The ideal solution in this situation is to swap pinions, but efforts to remove the pinion from the spare motor on Saturday were unsuccessful. Since we'd like the 160 usable for North Shore Day on January 21st, the current thinking is to send both the spare and bad motor out, have their pinions swapped, and then get the burned-up armature bearing repaired at our leisure while the spare motor goes into the car. Stay tuned!

Richard worked on the motor removal project as forklift driver and general technical advisor, but in between work on that he was painting sections of historic rail for use in a future exhibit of different types of rail. Here he's painting a piece of 1901 rail, I believe, and a piece of 1882 rail followed. New volunteer Jimmy helped by sand-blasting these pieces to prep them for painting.

As the sun set, the 160 was up on jacks with its truck rolled out.

Several car shop workers gather around as Richard runs the forklift and Nick (right) directs to lift the motor. The eerie-looking figure next to the truck is Mikey, who is there to "catch" the axle cap bearing brasses. Others who worked on this job included Zach, Greg, Jimmy, and new-ish volunteer Steven.

Thanks to Bill Wulfert for sending this photo of the motor suspended in mid-air after removal from the truck (visible in the foreground). This is a WH 557, a type used on (I think) every standard North Shore steel passenger car and most of their freight and work equipment as well.

Once the motor was removed, safely stowed away for the moment, and the car set back down on its truck, the diesel was coupled up. You'll note that while normally we might just leave the car in this spot, that's not really an option - it's still sticking several feet out the door and there isn't much rail left to use on track 41! Nick and Greg instead put the car back in Barn 6 at the end of the night.