Weekend Photo Album

Many thanks to Steven, who was out volunteering throughout the weekend and sent this terrific photo album of what he and others were working on.

Saturday evening started with Steven and Jimmy clearing gravel out of the flangeways outside the new east end of Barn 4 so that the 18 and the Army 45-tonner wouldn't derail going into the barn.

Afterward, as shown above and below, Steven, Jimmy, and Joel did the switch move to extract the 18 from track 73 and move it over to the inspection pit. The "Matchbox" came out first and went back in first; it doesn't have working heat and won't be used for Happy Holiday Railway, so it will be buried behind the 18 and 4391. The 4391 is shown above, nicely it up with the 1374 behind it in Yard 7, and below back in Barn 7 on track 73.

Below is the 18 motoring out to the tail track.

And below, the 45-tonner pushes the car through the new Barn 4 extension and into the old building. You can just barely see behind the car where new plywood walls have been erected - the contractor installed these and some access doors (but not the track doors) during the week. Steven got some video of the 18 being moved into the shop here - at the beginning and end you can hear the odd crackling and popping sounds as the car flattens the foam in the flangeways.

And below, the 18 in the nice newly concreted and unusually clean shop.

Below, we move to Sunday, and a much better and more extensive photo essay of the work that was done on the 18 than I managed to accomplish. First, Greg is at ground level keeping an eye on the air compressor. One challenge of putting the car where the air compressor is over the pit is that the doors are almost inevitably going to be in mid-air. I need to build a plywood bridge plate that can sit across the rail so we don't have to keep using ladders to get into the car.

And below, a nice view of the air compressor from inside the car. This National BB2 has the motor mounted over the pump, as opposed to WABCO pumps which more often mount the motor alongside the pump, I think. Anyway, if you want to see what a minor compressor flashover looks like, here you go. Audio has been removed to make it a bit more, ah, family-friendly...

Anyway, after that, we proceeded to clean, slot, and stone the commutator, which seems to have had the desired effect, at least for now. Below is yours truly, lying down on the job yet again. I think this may be while I was using a small tool to clean out the slots in between the commutator segments.

Below, Richard uses a small stone at the end of a plastic handle to gently grind burrs off the commutator. During this part of the operation, the pump was run on a welder so that it turned relatively slowly and only had low voltage on it.

Fast forward to the evening, and Steven spent white a while thoroughly vacuuming the car out. Below is a shot looking forward from just aft of the drop section.

As you can see, we moved the car back a few feet (this time, now that the pump was working better, under power and not with manual car movers!) so that the doors were accessible.

Below is a neat photo from the inspection pit, standing under the front end of the car looking back. At the very top left is one of the grid boxes, which are located under the front end of the car, and to the right are some junction boxes and switches for the MU system. The car has Tomlinson couplers so there are devices for automatically cutting in and out the electrical and air connections. To the right, just over that water bottle, you can see an air hose pointing down, which is missing on the left... I'll add that to the to-do list. Even just from this photo you can probably see that the car has compromise treads that are wider than "tram wheel" treads.

Here's a mouse's-eye view of the front half of the car looking up toward the cab, though this is taken from the drop section, so this is the view of any shorter person when they board the car. Note the car's nice new stool, courtesy of Joel's Home and Interurban Car Furnishings, Ltd.!

And a final shot of the 18 after the barn lights were turned off. That reminds me, I need to get some more repro car cards to fill in some of the gaps in the ad card racks...

And now we go back in time to earlier on Sunday and look at some other projects and happenings around the museum. First, a view of our Bee Line over-the-road motor coach in storage in the Hoffman Garage. This bus is complete but needs quite a bit of cosmetic work.

And speaking of bus cosmetic work, here's Milwaukee 441, which just came back from the paint shop.

Here are a couple of bumper pieces of the 441 that Bus Steven was cleaning up. These will be sent out to get chrome-plated.

The bumper on the rear of the bus, shown below, is painted silver.

Steven spent some time helping Joel move spare parts that we just acquired into storage. Below are a couple of items on a pallet. I believe these are consolidated glottis assemblies.

It may be hard to tell, but the milk crate and boxes in the foreground hold trolley shoes - a lot of them. Parts like this that are consumables are extremely valuable since we go through them! Thanks to the whole gang that went to pick up these spare parts.

Hey, know anyone who could use a paint striper for putting stripes on roads or sidewalks? We got 'em - cheap!