Shanty Slide Show

Now that inspections are pretty much over and it has stopped raining for a while, it's time to get back to work on fixing up the Jewell Road waiting shanty.  Here's what the west side looked like when I started in the morning.

The main problem remaining is that the two long siding boards over the window need to be replaced.  I had one already made; it was trimmed to fit in the wood shop. 

Here the lower board has been split lengthwise, and half of it removed:

And here it is completely gone.  It may not be obvious, but the space above the window was crammed full of old wasp nests.  Luckily there were no signs of life, and I used a long stick to clean it all out.

And now the new wood can go into place:

There are a few more wood parts for the window frame; I have the measurements and will make them at home.  I also need a good supply of caulk to fill the gaps and seal any possibility of leaks.

And then I painted all the new wood, plus a second coat on parts that had already been painted blue.

And finally, a second coat of red.  

By the way, I don't object to people looking inside -- there's not much to see, and nothing worth stealing.  But please latch the door when you leave to keep rain from getting in.  Thanks!

Memorial Day Weekend

 Saturday

Buzz reports:

Beautiful weather allowed photos of freshly painted Army 8537 and PRR 476199.

Photos by Buzz

Sunday

Sunday, on the other hand, was pretty soggy, but we had a lot more visitors than I would have expected, so on the whole, all was well.

Frank and I were running the 431 and 460.

Here's the Shay with its mixed train.  Did we mention that this summer we'll be having a mixed train weekly?  Where's Lucius Beebe when you need him?

The Zephyr was in operation, including the special dinner train

.

And here's our crew.  We had two or three different car hosts assisting us during the day.  This is Steve Mikulski on the right.  Their help is always appreciated.

Frank adds...

As mentioned, we made four trips with the 431 and 460 before putting the train away in the late afternoon, by which time the sun had come out.

This is a sharp looking train!

After that, I changed into work clothes and got to work on the 63. I had a little time before dinner, so I put some more white primer on bare spots on the left side of the car. After dinner, I got to work with the vermilion, aka vision-searing orange.

To start, I used a brush to go around the standee windows and along the roof line...

After that, I switched to a trim roller and went along the area between the belt rail and drip rail...

And finished up by completing the "letterboard." Other than the doors, which I still need to do, this side has its first coat of orange complete.

It's pretty clear that it will need at least one, quite possibly two or three, additional coats of paint, as the orange doesn't cover particularly well. But this gives you a pretty good idea of what the final product will look like. The belt rail will have a three-stripe maroon/ivory/maroon band, plus there will be maroon striping along the roof line and on the drip rail. The roof will also get a fresh coat of grey, which I believe is a bit lighter than what's on the car now.

Finally, we have another entry in our "what is it?" contest. This thing was just built in-house by some of our volunteers. Any guesses as to what it is?

Busy Tuesday

It's time for another pictorial report of weekday happenings.  I was out at the Museum last week, but didn't take any pictures, so there wasn't much to post.  The important thing was that I was able to verify that the new motor bearing on the 309 seemed to work well, without overheating, so we're on track to get three more made to complete that truck.

And sitting in the shop is the old bearing.  Note how thin it is.  This will go into storage.

Memorial Day weekend is coming up, of course, and we plan to run the 309 and 319 on Sunday.  So I put the train together, tested the brakes, and verified that everything was working properly.  I only ran it back and forth a hundred feet or so, but that's enough.

It's kind of crowded out here.  Not much room for good pictures.

If you can make it out to IRM on Sunday, stop by and say hello!

Lots of other projects were going on in Barn 4.  Here's the latest new door for the 213:

John has been working on wiring up the 306, and here he is under the car pondering where all the wires are supposed to go.

Down in the pit, we get a good view of a traction motor.  

And the wiring:

Frank Kehoe was helping on the 1808, stripping and refinishing interior woodwork.

He's also been a great help with the 309 bearings.  And here is Tim painting the floor:

And I also spent some time collecting parts for a planned inter-museum parts swap, which we might bother to explain if it ever actually happens.  Stay tuned!

Seats Away!

Frank writes...

There's been a lot of progress on the CA&E curve-sider seat project since the last blog update! A huge THANK YOU goes out to Jon Fenlaciki, who towed a trailer into Chicago last week to pick up the custom-woven seat material right after it arrived in town. He took it over to the upholstery shop in Bellwood, and then on Sunday he met me out at the museum to get to work in the 451.

The plan is to remove the seats from the 451, get them restored, put these seats into the 460, get the 460's seats restored, and then put those into the 451 - hopefully, after we've repainted the 451's interior while the seats were out. Hopefully that makes sense! Each seat back is held in with three machine screws through the tube along the frame top and anywhere from zero to five wood screws driven in sideways from underneath the cushions. Once we got into a rhythm, the work went pretty quickly.

We're holding onto the leatherette antimacassars because it's not part of the scope of work we gave the upholstery shop, and because not all the cars will get them back. These were installed by the CA&E sometime around 1950 or so, we believe. As such, the 453 and 460 - which are being restored to end-of-service condition - will get the antimacassars back, but the 451, which is being restored to its condition around 1947-1948, won't. Here, Jon is pulling tacks out of a particularly stubborn antimacassar.

And here are half a car's worth of seat backs and cushions loaded onto Jon's trailer. After this photo was taken we tarped everything and tied it down securely with ratchet straps. I'm happy to report that Jon dropped these seats off at the upholstery shop today (Monday morning).

Here's the 451's interior with many of its seats gone. You can see where the paint is flaking off the walls and ceiling, but in general, the car is in remarkably good shape. These cars have no appreciable rust at all; they were only 12 years old when retired, the railroad took care of them after retirement because they hoped to sell them, and Trolleyville kept them indoors for their entire preservation career.

What else was happening around the property? It was the second day of a highly successful "Chicago & North Western Weekend," and on Saturday the C&NW Historical Society's archives and museum building on Main Street was dedicated to great interest and fanfare. Things were a little lower key on Sunday, but the 1630 did make its inaugural main line (test) trip of the year. And over at the Hoffman Garage, the Trolley Bus gang was working on affixing more accoutrements to our newly restored Milwaukee Marmon.

Up on the rooftop, Richard was bolting down the trolley hooks and the saddle they're mounted to.

Over at 50th Avenue, Douglas Park service was being provided by C&NW 1518. The first GP7 ever built has seen a LOT of work go into it the past few years, including quite a bit of exterior paint and - as of just recently - interior paint as well.

The cab has been completely restored and repainted and was open for visitors on Sunday. The restoration job is beautiful and involved a lot of backdating to return the engine to essentially original condition.

At the end of the afternoon, before dinner, I grabbed the can of vermilion orange paint and started doing some touch-up on the 63. Trim rollers are great for doing the large areas but I still need a brush for the nooks and crannies. Zach snapped the above photo of yours truly.

And here's how the car looks at the moment. I'll still need to use a brush to do the edging around the standee windows, not to mention the doors, but soon enough the car will turn orange from the belt rail to the roof. And then we'll start in with second coats, not to mention the ends and the other side. "Quickie" paint job is a relative term.

Scrapping the 250

We recently received some photos taken back in February 1995 by Dave Diamond showing the scrapping of North Shore 250 (thanks to Zach Ehlers for making these available). This was a 1917 interurban combine we had acquired from The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society in about 1989, when that group folded. TWERHS had gotten it in the early 1970s from the Indiana Railway Museum in Westport in the same deal that led CA&E 318 on its ill-fated trip north.

Anyway, the 250 had deteriorated in Westport, deteriorated more in East Troy, and was kind of a wreck by the time we got it (photos here). As far as I know, nobody else wanted it, and we didn't need a third North Shore combine, so in 1994-1995 it was stripped of parts and scrapped. You North Shore fans may want to avert your eyes.

Scrapping took place on the streetcar line just northeast of the ruling curve. You'll notice that one end was removed and sold to a fan; that end has recently returned.

The car is lifted off its trucks.

And then it's pivoted away from the tracks.

The trucks were allocated to Michigan Electric 28, which used the same type of Baldwin MCBs.

Looks like someone needs to stand on the back of the old Caterpillar forklift to give it some extra weight!

The car was tipped on its side, possibly to more easily salvage equipment off the roof or underbody. As photos at the bottom of this post show, it was then tipped upright again, burned, and cut up for scrap.

Sunday Scenes

I was out of town for the past two weeks, but now it's time to get back to work.  One of the current projects, as noted before, is to reupholster all of the seats in the three CA&E St. Louis cars.  Here's what the interior of the 451 looks like before starting.  I worked for a while on this.

The Shay was fired up for the first time this season on Saturday.  Here we see some visitors watching as it pulls the caboose train out of Barn 9.

The 36 was over the pit for inspection.  Most of it went well, of course, but our sharp-eyed inspectors noticed that a leaf spring on the trailer truck had several broken leaves, so this car is out of service until that can be replaced.  Finding a leaf spring of the correct type may not be easy.

The next project was to install the new bearings in the 309.  Here we are sitting on the tail track, waiting for our turn over the pit.  This is still the pride of the fleet, I think.

Turning around, we have a sight you probably don't see at many large museums: our Executive Director is mowing the lawn.  Keeps him out of trouble.

Since the construction of the Barn 4 extension, the trolley wire over the pit lead track has been deactivated.  So getting equipment in and out requires the help of a locomotive.  Here the 36 is slowly on its way back to Barn 8.  You can't see him, but Frank is in the cab of the 36, so he can apply the brakes if necessary.  

 to be continued....

Frank writes...

When I arrived, I helped adjust the brakes on the 36 and take a look at the broken leaf spring. The car can move around without any real risk, since only one of the three leaf springs on that side of the truck has any broken pieces, but we still don't want to run the car at high speed in this condition. For better or worse, fixing this will likely require more time than anything; we need to find a shop truck, put the 36 on that, then take apart the 36's truck to replace the spring before reversing everything. At least the affected truck is the trailer truck, so we won't have to pull motors.

Anyway, let's pick up where my father left off. When we got the 309 on the pit, we jacked up the motor to pull the axle cap. I owe a huge THANK YOU to Zach and Will, who helped with this dirty and exhausting job. Zach had done this kind of truck work before, which was good, because that meant one of us knew what he was doing! We got the axle cap off and, luckily, we were able to slide the new bearing into place without having to pull the motor farther away from the axle. The photo above shows the new bearing in place after the axle cap was reinstalled.

Here are the halves of the old bearing. Obviously we'll hang onto this, both in case we have any issues with the new bearing but also long-term just to have as a working spare.

The car motivated itself outside the door so that we could oil all the axle caps. It's nice to see a CA&E car on third rail territory without that pesky overhead wire over it, isn't it?

Zach took this photo of yours truly putting oil into the axle cap with the new bearing. It was just about time for dinner at this point, so we moved the 309 back over to Barn 8. At some point we'll want to do a few test trips, regularly checking the bearing temperature with the laser thermometer, to make sure that this bearing is performing as expected.

And now for something completely different.

After dinner, I grabbed the vermilion/orange paint we had matched a couple of months ago and headed over to Shaker Heights 63. I was able to roll the entire side of the car below the belt rail, minus the doors, in about an hour. It will obviously need at least one, possibly two, more coats, but that was expected given how poorly orange tends to cover. I'll also need to follow up with a brush to get all the nooks and crannies, but that's also just part of the process. Stay tuned for more updates on the orangeification of the 63.