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.