The Coach

Frank writes...

Saturday night I received some exciting news from the "second shift" guys, who were out at the museum working late. The 308 had been brought over to the pit to have its motor truck pulled!

Above is a picture taken during the switch move, which entailed the other three cars pulling the 308 out to the car line, where a diesel pushed it in on the pit track. The plan has been to pull both motors out of the car's motor truck - the bad motor, because it will need to be removed sooner or later anyway, and the good motor because we'd like to send it to the motor shop for a "dip and bake" i.e. general cleanup and repair but without full disassembly or rebuilding.

A crew consisting of Zach, Greg, Good Nick, Nathan, Mikey, Jimmy, Brian, Will, and Matt worked until something like 4:00 in the morning jacking the car up, removing both GE 66 motors, and putting it safely back down on its truck. A huge THANK YOU goes out to everyone who made this happen!! The two photos above are from Zach; the bottom one was sent at about 2:00am.

When I arrived out at the museum Sunday afternoon, Zach and several of the regulars were away picking up part of a North Shore car (more on that in a following post) while Joel, Greg, and Nick were pulling spam cans out of Barn 8. The 308 appeared as shown above. The CA&E called trailers "coaches" so that's what it is for the moment. One of our history-minded volunteers put post-it-note numbers over some of the numerals on the car, rechristening it a 200-series trailer.

Here are the two motors that were removed from the car. On the right is the blown #4 motor and on the left is the #3 motor, which is fully serviceable. Thanks to some significant donations that came in at the end of last year, we are hopeful - depending on how the quote comes back from the motor shop - that we will be able to send the #3 motor out for a "dip and bake" to keep it operating for a long time.

I spent much of the afternoon putting things back together on the car. Greg helped get the brake rigging back together, with Nick, Doodlebug Bob, and a rarely seen Doodlebug Dan helping to get one balky bolt and castle nut to go together properly. Joel and Jimmy helped get the air hoses put back on and the ground strap hooked back up. Then, a few of the guys pulled the 308 out of the barn and set it in Yard 6 with the diesel while I brought out the other three cars and coupled them up. And the result, in the above photo by Matt Kalnins, is our first four-car train in several years!

Boy, I miss the 308... it will be wonderful to have it back in service once the motor work is done. Just within the last couple of weeks, the motor shop has started tearing apart our spare motor to provide a quote on rewinding, so fingers crossed it isn't too high. As for the train, I tried running back into the barn from the 308 as a control trailer. The brakes worked fine, and the first time I took power that worked fine too, but after that the train wouldn't motor from that car. My guess is that we may need to adjust the C21 controller. We'll inspect the 308 and get it all ready for its debut as a "coach" on July 1st.

I finished up the day by tarping the good motor and stamping numbers (3L, 4R, etc) into the axle caps and bearings that had been removed. Our friend Jim Ward from Rio Vista was visiting, so he brought with him news from the west, in particular the fact that WRM now has the country's largest collection of light rail vehicles. We here at IRM are stuck with a grand total of zero LRVs. But I'll take Type M over chopper control any day!