Air Compressor Work

Frank writes...

Sunday was "air compressor day" on Shaker Heights 18. Thanks to Joel and the crew, who used a diesel to bring the car over to Barn 4 and put it on the inspection pit Saturday evening. After already having been the first car inside the new barn extension, this time the 18 was the first car over the new concrete. The flangeways were kept clear of concrete with strips of insulating foam, so that made for an odd squeaky sound as it was compressed by the car's flanges. But I digress.

Here's how the car looked when I showed up. With all the new unblemished concrete, and equipment cleared away from the walls, the shop looks amazingly professional these days! Thanks to Matthew and Jimmy, who helped move the car a few feet east with manual "car movers" so that the compressor - located just aft of the doors - was over the pit.

The first order of business was removing and cleaning the bottle valves, which had been sticking. Richard Schauer showed me how this all worked and how to clean them. Once we had the process down, it went quickly, even with the cramped quarters underneath the car (this is where the pit was a huge help). Above, the brass bottle valve body on the left and the steel sleeve on the right were removed for each of the four valves, brought into the shop, cleaned out, oiled, and reinstalled.

The 18's pump has also occasionally been blowing fuses on startup, which is obviously undesirable. No permanent damage has been done - yet - but we wanted to fix this before these minor flashovers became major. Here you can see the top view of the National BB2 air compressor (the only one in our collection) through the inspection hatch in the floor of the car, Richard worked with Steven J, Greg, and myself to inspect, wipe down, slot, and then stone - basically, smooth out - the commutator, which makes the brushes ride much more smoothly and reduces arcing and "ring fire," a cause of minor flashovers. The stoning was done using a welder so that the pump could be run at (relatively) low speed and on low voltage. Following this work, the pump ran much more cleanly and evenly. With the bottle valve work, it also stopped "wheezing" due to sticking valves, and pumped up faster. Success! Many thanks to everyone who helped with this. Knock on wood, but hopefully the pump will perform better going forward.

After all this work, Steven J spent quite a while thoroughly vacuuming the car, which it badly needed, while I cleaned a few windows, bolted down the rest of the seat cushions, and cleaned all the random parts and tools out of the car. We even located a stool for the motorman, courtesy of the department head - thanks, Joel!

If you're wondering why we've been working on the 18 almost every weekend, the answer is that we want it available as a possible backup car for Happy Holiday Railway. We like to have two streetcars out for HHR, but only the 3142 has fully working heat right now: the heat in the 4391 is, shall we say, lackluster. For cool days, that's fine, but if we have any really frigid HHR days, that can be punishing for riders and especially for the crew, who are on the car all day and not just for 10 minutes. So, the 18, which happens to have quite functional heat, has been called upon. We'll see - if we have a spate of warm days, the 3142 and 4391 may be sufficient for this year's event.

In other news, Greg and Steven J spent much of the day sanding the 415 over in Barn 2, though I didn't stop by to get any photos. And there was bus work being done: above, "Bus Steven" is wire-wheeling bumper components for Milwaukee trolley bus 441, which is glistening right behind him at the north end of the Hoffman Garage. Later in the day, these bumper parts received primer.

Doodlebug Bob was also working on contactor parts for IT 1565 and Joel was busily running the forklift to put some recently acquired spare parts into protected storage. Above, I spotted this nifty artifact that was just donated by a generous supporter in Ohio: the original Lombard station sign from the CA&E. We'll work on finding a nice place to display this!