"Streetcar Available"

Our old friend Ron Smolen informs us that a streetcar body inside a spaghetti restaurant in Columbus, O. is available, because the building is about to be demolished, after part of the roof collapsed.  This body didn't appear on either PNAERC or the "chicken coop" list, but from the two pictures at this link it looks like it might have been legit.  I certainly want nothing to do with it, but there it is for the historical record. 

 

Though if you want it, you'd better act now!  :)

Frank adds...

It is indeed legit, or at least parts of it are. I'm reasonably certain it's an ex-Dallas Railway & Terminal 111-115 series double-truck Birney that was built by American in 1922 for Texas Interurban Railway as part of the TIRy 100-104 series. I'm not sure how much of the wood is original; these spaghetti restaurant cars vary a lot, from cars with mostly original wood to cars that look like they were torn down to a steel skeleton and all the original wood replaced by house construction-grade wood.

Refining the Process

Frank writes...

You get one guess about what I was up to on Sunday. ...did you guess "seats in the 460?" Then you win the prize - Andy Sunderland's voice on your home answering machine! But I digress.

I could have called today's post "I get by with a little help from my friends" because it was a real team effort. To start the day, Greg and Good Nick helped me use the Taylor-Dunn to take all the old seats from the 460 that we'd already removed over to the 451 for storage. We also brought back all the reupholstered seat backs and a few cushions. Above, you can see the interior of the 460 with fewer old seats and more new seats stored throughout the car.

As we go along, we're steadily refining the process for replacing these seats. The seat backs are attached with three 1/4-20 machine screws that go in through the tubular frame along the top (the seat backs have wooden frames but these screws thread into steel inserts), plus anywhere from zero to three wood screws that go at the bottom from underneath the cushions. They seat into the base of the frame. It's a tight fit, which of course is intentional. The antimacassars add a degree of difficulty, because not only do we need to wedge the new seats into place, but we need to line up the original holes in the antimacassars with the holes in the tubular frame and the threaded steel inserts. Some of the seats only need a "normal" amount of horsepower to get into place; above, I'm using an awl to ensure the seat back is positioned correctly in line with the frame.

And then sometimes you really need to push to get the seat back seated all the way into the frame. Above, I'm pulling on the seat frame for leverage and pushing on the seat back with my knee while Nick (right) gets an awl into the hole. The previous two photos were taken by Zach while we were working on the second of today's seats to be installed.

As we line up the holes, it's helpful to "pin" them in place with an awl or a punch. One of our volunteers works for Metra in car maintenance, and he reports that pinning fabric to seat frames is done much this way by the professionals. In the view above, this is an initial test fit without the antimacassar in place; once the threaded inserts are located, small holes in the fabric are created and a tap is used to chase the threads and get rid of any upholstery material.

Above, the first seat we installed Sunday was a real bear - it was just an extremely tight fit. Richard, shown finishing up the process by running the machine screws in, was instrumental in getting this seat installed. Jimmy is in the background looking on.

Here's Zach testing out one of the newer seats.

At the end of the day, the car looked like this. We got three more seats installed with a fourth started.

We're making good progress! The majority of the non-bulkhead seats have now been replaced.

So, what else was going on? There was a group from another museum visiting, so a few of the guys were showing them around and discussing joint exhibit opportunities. Richard, Will, Ashton, and Matt moved the (extraordinarily heavy) IC Highliner adapter coupler from the cars in Yard 14 over to the cars in Yard 5 so that track 51 can be switched out at some point. Jimmy was working on testing recent air brake work on the 309 and 460.

Above, Nathan was working on cleaning out a gummed-up double check valve from the D13 that was affecting operation of the straight-air side of the brake system. We're hoping to operate the dump car for the public once or twice this coming year. It was very popular when we ran it briefly on Showcase Weekend this past year, and although it failed following a few trips, that issue (a blown control resister) was fixed pretty shortly afterward.

Thanks to Richard and the others who concluded a mutually beneficial trade between IRM and another organization over the past week. Among the items we received were a set of batteries for CTA 2200s, shown here, which our set needs; the control box and "card box" behind, which I believe are for CTA 2400s; and some other 'L' car parts.

Saturday Report

 Work is continuing steadily on the 306, mostly during the week.  There was no one on this project on Saturday, but the blower remains connected to make sure the car doesn't deflate.

Tim just never stops working on the 1268.  Here he continues to strip the paint from the interior of the 1268.  The interior will look great when he's done -- maybe nearly as good as the 309!

Meanwhile, in astronomical news, nothing can eclipse this: the fender got installed on the Michigan Electric 28.  It goes quickly if you have enough hands; the crew included Norm, Greg, Nick, Jimmy, and Bill.    

And here Jimmy shows how you can hitch a free ride without buying a ticket.

I spent much of my time sorting and counting various car parts in storage, for some of the projects that are under consideration.

Finally, I checked on the Jewell Road shelter.  We've been getting a lot of rain and snow recently, and I wanted to check that the roof wasn't leaking into the building.  Some of the structure, especially in the northwest corner, is partly rotted out due to leaks in the past.   But everything appears to be dry, so at least it isn't getting worse.

I need to replace some of the joists and sister a couple of the studs, all of which are 2x4s.  That won't be difficult once I remove the interior paneling.  

I think this type of paneling can still be purchased; I just need to check the dimensions.  The amusing thing is that it is called "carsiding", although I wouldn't actually use it for that purpose.

Inquiry from Belgium - Updated

 I received an interesting email from a man in Belgium who writes:

Hello,

First of all, I would like to wish you an excellent year 2025.

I am writing to you from Belgium to seek information that I have been unable to find locally or on the internet regarding manufacturer plates from the St. Louis Car Company (see attached photos). Could you please provide me with any information or direct me to sources regarding the model, type of machine, or any other reference on which these manufacturer plates are affixed?

Thank you in advance for your assistance, and I apologize if this email has caused any inconvenience.

Best regards,

[Name withheld]

He included ten pictures, but they're all pretty similar.  Some are B-2.  I would say these are obviously manufacturer's plates from PCC trucks that St. Louis exported to Belgium, presumably right after WWII.  I don't know if anybody would have documentation that would identify exactly when they were built or for what particular order of cars.

Now I'd like to find a good picture of a St. Louis PCC truck.  This is a Clark B-2, and it's partly disassembled and missing the motors, but it's the best I could find quickly:

UPDATE:   Bill Wulfert sends a picture of a truck that will be rebuilt for the Kansas City car:

Vous avez des questions, nous avons des réponses!

More Seat Progress

Frank writes...

I'm sure you're already getting tired of hearing about seats in the 460, but bad news: we're still only about a third of the way there. Progress continues, though.

We got two more seats installed in the 460, with installation of a third begun but not yet finished, so we're still roughly on schedule. Above, I'm sitting in the bulkhead seat at the end of the car looking at the last of the movable seats on this side of the main compartment. The old seat back has been removed and the new seat back, visible inside its black plastic bag to the right, is ready to go in. This was one of the two seats we completed.

Bob Olson was a big help. In addition to installing two new seats, we had new screws come in that were needed for two of the seats we already installed. Here, Bob is tightening down the screws on one of those seats.

And here's an overview near the end of the day. The seat visible to the left facing away, and the one to the right facing toward the camera, are the two ones we installed today. All the movable seats on the R side of the main compartment are now done.

It's not always obvious from these "overview" photos how big of an improvement this is. Before the old seats go away forever, above is one of the seats showing torn fabric (there's another layer of fabric underneath it).

And here's a seat back. Yecch. It will be good to have all this replaced by nice, new fabric. In other 460 news, Jeff and Joseph were working on repairing side windows. The car has long had a problem with some of the side windows sticking and being very difficult to open, so those two are removing the affected windows, cleaning up the tracks and making any necessary repairs, and reinstalling the windows.

This cash fare receipt fell out of one of the antimacassars I removed today. I'm not sure of the year, unfortunately, but it was after the cut-back to Forest Park. It appears to have been issued on January 17th for a westbound trip from Forest Park to Westmore in Lombard, with a 37-cent fare and a 6-cent tax.

And now, folks, it's time for... drumroll... Gauge-a-palooza™! A few of the car shop guys including Brian, Jimmy, and Mikey were working on air gauges over the weekend and repaired several that were on the "to-do" list following the end of the season.

One of the gauges that was rebuilt on Sunday was for our very own 308, which was in service on Vintage Transport Extravaganza 2024 and likely will be again in 2025. Above, Brian shows off a rebuilt gauge with fresh, still slightly tacky Washington Blue paint.

And here it is looking a bit more recognizable. The paint wasn't quite dry Sunday night, but once it is, the gauge will be installed on the car. This is a gauge from stock that has been repaired; the glass from the gauge currently on the car will be switched over to this one. Thanks to our intrepid cub reporter Brian LaKemper, we can also report that the three guys listed above calibrated air gauges for the 309 and 409, cleaned and calibrated the 1808's gauges, replaced one gauge on the 4412 and calibrated the other. They also calibrated a spare gauge, to be available as a quick replacement, cut a new stock of gaskets out of rubber, and replaced leaky stem gaskets in motorman's valves on the 309 and 460. Many thanks to all the guys doing this often-thankless air brake work!

Elsewhere on the property, on my way in, I stopped by the future site of Barn 15 and snapped the above photo. It's hard to tell, but in the distance, you can see barn post footings going in along the north side of the barn at the east end! Fortunately, Bob Olson has come to our rescue with the two photos below, which he snapped about a week ago.

Above, the line of barn post footings extends about half the length of the north side of the building.

Here's a closeup showing the concrete footing and the metal post riser. The wooden post gets bolted to this riser slightly above ground level, which avoids the perennial problem of the bottoms of the posts rotting out. So, Barn 15 is officially going up, though it's only made it perhaps a foot above ground level so far.

Back over in Barn 4, in the eastward extension of the shop lean-to, I caught Dan and Jimmy assembling shelving. This room will be used primarily for storage. In other general shop news, Brian reports that Ashton spent time Saturday working on the end of North Shore 250 while Zach painted some trim in the new shop extension.

At Greg's behest, I took a walk out to the 306 and looked inside the car, where the weekday guys have been hard at work. The #1 end brake valve has been installed, though not yet piped in, which is exciting! Part of the extensive work to backdate this car to its authentic Fox River Electric configuration involves moving the motorman's position back to its original location on the left. Shaker Heights moved the motorman over toward the center of the car (a photo of this arrangement, exhibited by sister car 304 at Fox River, can be found here). The original location of the motorman's position was more like how the 415 is set up, as seen here.

Mileage Report

A couple of weeks ago Joel sent out the revenue mileage report for 2024, and I thought some of our readers might find it mildly interesting. This, of course, only covers electric cars and revenue service miles - I'm not sure how the other departments track mileage. And the winner is...

2,135 - CNS&M 714

2,013 - CNS&M 749

1,609 - CA&E 431

1,421 - CTA 3142

748 - CA&E 460

506 - CTA 4410

506 - CTA 4412

442 - CRT 1797

409 - CTA 4391

404 - CRT 1754

282 - CA&E 309

260 - CA&E 319

246 - ComEd 4

231 - IT 101

190 - CRT 1268

187 - CSL 1374

153 - CSL 144

107 - VC 19

100 - IT 277/518/234

These were followed (in order) by IT 1565, NWERR 24, IT 415, CA&E 308, IR 65, SHRT 18, CTA 4290, IT 1702, and C&WT 141. For the CA&E woods, this was the 308's first appearance on the mileage report since 2019 - it had 50 revenue miles put on it over the course of Vintage Transport Extravaganza, of course as a control trailer. Shaker Heights 18 notched 32 miles. The 36 is currently out of service until we can replace a broken leaf spring on its trailer truck; watch this space for updates on that project.

Chilly Sunday

Frank writes...

Sunday was quite a bit colder than Saturday, with temperatures in the high single digits (that's around -14 C for our metrically minded readers), but there was a sizeable crew out and a lot got done.

Once we got the heat and lights turned on mid-afternoon following completion of heat system work (see below), I was able to make progress on seats. Above we have the two seats that were completed. The one in the right foreground had its back installed last week, but there was a sheared-off bolt in the frame that was preventing it from rotating correctly. The seat behind it was completely redone today and went more quickly than the others have gone; hopefully it's a harbinger of things to come!

Here's a view taken before that first photo showing work in progress on the seat. Most visible parts of the seat frame - the plated tubing, armrests, cushions, and back - are the "movable" part of the frame. This is connected to the stationary part of the frame, the part bolted to the floor and wall, with just two vertical bolts through the middle, which go into a rotating mechanism. One of the bolts had sheared off, so I had to extract it, find and cut down a replacement, and reinstall everything. Thanks to Richard for his help with this. 

We're now up to six seats done and 21 to go, though two of the ones that have been done still need the final machine screw driven in (some of the originals are pretty goofed up; replacements screws are due any day).

For those following along at home, other than the bulkhead seats, which will be a bit more of a challenge because the frame needs to be unbolted from the car to remove the seat back, we've got all but one of the seats on the R side (top, in this image) of the main compartment done.

Besides seat mechanism repair and seat back replacement, the 460 Improvement Society was hard at work on getting the car's heat working better. Jimmy, shown above, was helped by Greg, Richard, and Good Nick in working to repair the heat in the 460's smoker. The main compartment heat (which is on a separate circuit) worked fine, but it turned out that the coil that closes the contactor for the smoker heat had failed. Jimmy removed the working contactor from the 453 and used that to replace the one in the 460, though he also needed to swap resistors. We're going to try to replace the resistor and send the coil out to get repaired, so when attention inevitably turns to the 453, the smoker heat contactor should be working quite nicely!

In other news, Norm, Zach and others were working on inspecting motors on the Electroliner. One thing they wanted to do was cut down the brushes, which had been cut far too long when the motors were rebuilt. This is not ideal. Above is part of the pile of brush cutoffs created by this operation; remember, there are eight traction motors on that thing! Other than this minor issue, and the need to replace a wire inside the #2 motor, no significant issues were found.

When I arrived, I found that Nathan had been hard at work getting the HVAC in the new lean-to extension working and had succeeded in that quest. As such, the sliding door that used to open out onto the parking lot has now been removed so that the new extension is open to the old shop.

Nathan himself was hard at work installing acoustic tile in the room at the east end of the lean-to extension. By the end of the day, that entire upper wall had acoustic panels screwed into place over the sheet metal.

In other news, Ashton was working on stripping paint in the cab of ComEd 4 in preparation for an interior paint job; the 'Liner crew was working on the interior restoration project; and, at the end of the day, Zach, Mikey, and others switched the Electroliner back over to Barn 7 and put ComEd 4, which had also been on the inspection pit track, back in its usual spot in Barn 6.

News From the Pit

The Electroliner has been moved over to the pit track in Barn 4 for electrical work.  Now that the barn is longer than before, the Liner can be moved back and forth over the pit and still be under cover.  Norm and Zach were working on checking out the traction motors.  They still need some maintenance and repairs.

And here are a couple of views of the underbody equipment.

I spent some time adjusting the new locking mechanism for the 460.  This will be much more convenient for operating crews than having to climb up to a train door to unlock the chain.

Bill was cleaning up L roll signs, and also a card table from the CA&E.  This may go into the 460.

Then I went out to look for a shop truck that we'll need in order to pull out the trailer truck from the 36 that has broken springs.  This one looks like it ought to work.  Now I just need somebody to help me lift that pantograph.

And of course, several other projects were being worked on.  I can't be everywhere at once.