Pullman Weekend

Frank writes...

This past weekend was our first-ever Pullman Weekend event. It seemed to be well attended and well received.

I briefly stopped out on Saturday and snapped the above photo, in which every car visible was built by Pullman. The heavyweight train was out, pulled by two E-units (someone pointed out to me that we may be the only museum right now that can operate a two-unit set of E-units - can anyone offer a dissenting opinion?), while the C&NW F-7 pulled and pushed a three-car train of Pullman-built bi-levels. North Shore 749 was on the main line, Northwestern Elevated 24 on the 50th Avenue Shuttle, and CSL 144 on the streetcar line, all Pullman products. CA&E 409 and CTA 2153-2154 were on display at the 'L' station, too.

Then on Sunday, though the event continued out on the railroad, in the shop it was back to work.

A huge thank you goes out to the shop crew, who late on Saturday night took the 309 out to test the newly repacked #1L axle cap. The good news is that there was significant improvement: it, and one or two of the other new axle cap bearings, ran at about 75 degrees (versus about 55 degrees for the old bearings on the other truck), but didn't rise any higher. The bad news was that the #2R axle cap started acting up. It was fine headed east to Seeman Road, but coming west it heated up to about 120 degrees. We're going to try repacking this one, too, in case the issue is that not enough oil is getting onto the axle. So my first job was to pull the waste, clean it, and start it soaking in journal oil. The #2R axle cap is the one on the right in the above photo; you can see the "dust cover" waste bundle up against the chock. That goes right under the lid of the axle cap to prevent any crud from getting down into the box.

Of course our other CA&E wood car in need of work is the 319, which has a grid box being rebuilt. Joel was hard at work using the surface grinder to even out the contact surfaces on the grid elements, as shown above. I did a few more grid elements myself later in the day. Using this machine gets old after a while!

In other news, there's been remarkable progress on the South Storage Building, located just east of the Southwest Storage Building, aka the "U-Store-It" building. (If you like Google Maps as much as I do, the South Storage Building is being built here.) Early in the week, the posts went up, quickly followed by bracing, and by the end of the week the roof trusses were going up.

Also at the south end of the property, they've started work on lettering the Swift reefer located behind the B&G Barn. This reefer is closer to Olson Road than any of our other equipment and is pretty prominently located if you're driving up from the south, so it's nice to see it being cosmetically restored. This car is SRLX 25004, for those following along at home with their new printed rosters.

As usual, other work was going on, including fabricating replacements parts for the Electroliner and rebuilding brake valves for the IT Class B. Now, if you remember me mentioning that the Saturday night test trip with the 309 was a nighttime trip as opposed to a late afternoon trip, there was a reason for that. Saturday afternoon, a broken feeder connection was reported, so the DC Line Department went out with the line car to fix it. Many thanks to Brian LaKemper, who supplied the below photos of the outing.

Above is our trusty "line car train" with North Shore line car 604, which can't propel itself until motors are rebuilt for it, and ComEd 4 acting as the "horse."

Above, here's Joel investigating the problem.

And here's a nice shot of Will, Jimmy, and Joel on the 604's platform. Unlike some line cars, the 604 has a long "diving board" platform that can rotate out to the side, allowing the workers to walk out to the line pole alongside the tracks. It's a pretty useful feature for work like this.