Shaker Progress

Frank writes...

Sunday was gorgeous, a sunny day in the mid-70s. Due to family commitments, I changed my usual schedule and was at IRM from late morning until I skipped out mid-afternoon. I still managed to get some stuff done, though.

I spent most of my time putting more orange paint on Shaker Heights 63. The brush work is the slowest part of the job, but it's necessary because I can't get into all the corners and along edges with a trim roller. As shown above, I completed the trim work on the front end, including the bumper.

This photo was taken midway through the work, but I ended up completing nearly half of the left side of the car above the belt rail. This is not going to be a "one-sided" paint job! I am running low on paint, so I need to get another gallon of vermilion/orange, but I should have enough to finish the brush work on the rest of the car. Then the second gallon will go toward rolling all the flat surfaces.

I also had a few errands I needed to run. The most pressing was to make up the train for Thursday, when the 309 and 319 are on the schedule. The cars had been run together but weren't coupled, so I just needed to back up the 309, insert a link, and run them together again. And voila; note that when "stretched" there's about 3/4" between the coupler faces. I also checked the oil in both cars' air compressors.

Then, I dragooned Richard Schauer into helping me attempt to figure out what was causing the 18 to ride up on the frog at the South Junction facing point switch. The switch is shown above. We found that a few bolts holding the guard rail to the near (inside) rail, in the foreground, were loose. We're hopeful that tightening these may solve the problem, if it pulls the guard rail closer to the running rail. You'll recall that the 18 didn't pick this frog the last couple of years; the problem only started this year. But only time and testing will tell. Stay tuned. And thanks to Richard for all his help with this!

And in a final bit of good news, we have a photo of the first newly reupholstered seat for the 450s! The first example to be completed by the upholstery shop was delivered and test-fit in the 451, as shown above. This seat will probably actually be installed in the 460, and the 451 is dirty enough inside that I left both the seat back and cushion in their protective bags, but it looks like they should fit just fine. More seats have been completed, which means we need to remove the rest of the seats from the 451 and send them in for refurbishing as well.

Finally, before leaving town, I took some measurements of a spare Tomlinson coupler that may work to replace the one under the 453 that's missing some parts, and I snapped a couple of photos for the new signal roster. The what, you say? Here you go.