Onward to July

Frank writes...

Now that North Shore Line Day is in the rear view mirror, the next "heavy lift" for the Car Department is getting all of the equipment needed for the "70 for 70" Trolley Pageant on July 1st ready for operation. This will involve effort on quite a few different cars over the next six months.

My first task was to look at the air compressor on Shaker Heights 18. A couple of months ago, I had put the pole up to pump up the car and after the pump ran for about half a second the fuse blew. We were a bit worried that the pump may have flashed over, so I meggered it, and fortunately it checked out fine. I decided to replace the fuse block, which involved a trip to our storage area to pick up the correct type parts, but after doing that we successfully test-ran the pump. So the 18 should be ready to go. Above, you can see the car's National BB2 pump, which has the motor mounted atop the pump so that you can barely - if at all - access the motor. That little black door at top left provides access to one of the brush holders. The device with the cord hanging down from it is one of Joel's nifty magnetic block heaters, to warm the pump up a bit for testing.

After that, my attention turned to the trolley bases for the 460, which could use some servicing. Joel headed up disassembly of the first of the two trolley bases. He cleaned up the base bearing, which was not working very well, and I sand-blasted some of the component parts, as shown here.

We also used the Fullarton Spring Stretcher (patent pending) to expand two of the base springs a bit so that we could sand-blast and prime them. Here, Joel puts primer on the springs while they're mounted in the Spring Stretcher frame.

Meanwhile, as usual, progress was being made on other projects. The air compressor on Charles City Western steeplecab 300 flashed over last year, so Nick (above left) and Greg (right) took the end casting off the pump and removed the armature. We hoped that one of our spare armatures might be the right type, but no luck, so this armature will need to be sent out for rebuilding. Tim was also out, working on windows for the 1808, but I didn't get a photo of his work.

And at the end of the day, Nick finished up with painstakingly lettering the sign box for IT 415. Here he demonstrates the modern, polite way to tell people you don't want to listen to what they have to say. One of the priorities for the next few months will be getting the 415 into the Barn 2 spray booth, if at all possible, so that it can be painted and returned to service.