Meeting Day

Frank writes...

Saturday was a day of meetings, from the operating rules test in the morning to the safety meeting in the afternoon and the annual IRM membership meeting in the evening. Before we get to all that, though, let's start with some train stuff!

Mid-afternoon, after the safety meeting, Joel and the car shop guys worked on getting the 309 out for some testing to try out the new axle cap bearings. Ted and Ashtin reinstalled the air compressor strainer, which had been disassembled and cleaned out, and then Brian, Jimmy, and others (I'm sorry, there were a lot of people there and I'm having trouble recalling who all was involved) pulled the car outside for oiling. Ted drew the short straw and, with help from Joel, crawled under the car to oil the new bearings. The 45-tonner crew then pulled the car out to the car line where the pole could be raised.

Here we are at Depot Street. What a beauty! Anyway, we made it as far as Karsten's, with a few stops to check bearing temperatures. It became clear that one of the bearings was running hot, even at relatively sedate speeds. We made sure it didn't get hot enough to cause any damage, but we'll need to take a look at it. The bearing isn't too tight, so it's not clamping the axle; our hope is that it may be as simple as the waste making poor contact with the axle and not spreading oil effectively. The 309 was put back on the pit before the annual meeting so that this can be examined during the week (for the record, the bearing in question is the #1 axle, L side).

After the annual meeting, I was able to spray a coat of black paint on the end castings and through bolts for the 319's grid box. A huge THANK YOU goes out to Greg, who during the week sand-blasted the end castings and then primed everything.

And with that, on to the meetings! It's always nice to see people that I don't run into very often, and this time I got a chance to chat with Steve Iversen, Randy and Betty Anderson, Charlie Strong, and a few others. I also spoke with Buzz; we're going to try and pick back up with the project to get vinyl masks cut for the Futura lettering on the 451 so we can (hopefully) spray that this summer.

Above, the safety meeting was held in the cafeteria at Marengo High School, as has been the case the last couple of years. It's a very nice venue. The annual meeting was also held in this spot.

Above, Nick points to his preferred candidate's yard sign. Congratulations and condolences to the winners of the director elections, Bob Olson, who was reelected, and Lee Evans III (aka Lee 3), who is the assistant curator of the Diesel Department and was elected to his first term on the board.

The other matter that came up for a vote at the meeting was taking the 321 off the Permanent Collection list, which we discussed here a few weeks ago. The membership approved this measure, meaning the car is now no longer on the Permanent Collection list. But that said, there seemed to be some confusion around plans for the car. So, what's next for the 321?

First, the car is not in line to be scrapped; in fact, it hasn't even been deaccessioned in IRM's understanding of the word (i.e. it has not been slated for disposition). The authors of this blog are in favor of making the car available to a good home as a static display piece, but that decision will be up to the Board of Directors and will, of course, be dependent on someone being interested in taking the car. For now, the car is still part of IRM's historic collection, just not the core, or "permanent," collection.

If the car is made available to other organizations, it will not be as a complete car. IRM is retaining the trucks, motors, and control equipment in accordance with the original donation conditions for the car. As such, we don't really expect another trolley museum to be interested, though I'd love to be surprised on that count.

STOP THE PRESSES: Thanks to Matthew Kalnins, who was working in operations on Sunday and sent some photos of the 460. This was the public debut of the new seats! He said there were numerous favorable comments.

And on a related subject, Jon reported that the batch of seats recently taken to the upholstery shop - these comprise the first 1/3 of the seats that will go into the 451 - are already done! IRM recently acquired a cargo van, so we are hoping to use it sometime soon to take the remaining two-thirds of the 451 seats to the upholstery shop and retrieve this latest batch.