It's All a Complete Fabrication

Frank writes...

One of the great things about the CA&E wood cars is that there isn't that much steel in them. I'm not much of a woodworker but I'm definitely no steelworker. However, we discovered that the 18 needs a couple of missing pieces of steel replaced in its rear coupler carrier, so it was time to fabricate some new parts. Enter Richard Schauer, who unlike me is quite familiar with all things steel-related.

We needed to create something that looks like a very small table and will function as a wear plate for the 18's rear coupler (keep reading and all will be made clear). After Joel procured a new steel plate and I cut it into an "H" shape, Richard and I started with the blacksmithing. Above, Richard heats up the piece of metal with the torch.

Nick Espevik snapped this photo of the next step: while Richard keeps the heat on, I hit the thing with a big hammer. After enough hits, we have a couple of "ears" at a nice 90-degree angle. Time for the other side.

For this step, Richard gave me a primer in torch operation and we traded places. Here I am heating up the steel before he goes after it with the hammer. Once we had all four "ears" bent over, we let it cool for a while. Then, it was time to weld on the doubler plate that actually functions as the wear surface.

I hadn't welded anything in 20+ years, but Richard gave me a crash course in MIG welding and I gave it a shot. He took the above photo, too. Fortunately, neither the strength nor the appearance of this weld is too critical.

Voila! The original wear plate off the front end of the car is on the left, and our new fabrication is on the right. A huge THANK YOU goes out to Richard for all his help in making this!

And now you may be asking yourself, "what is this thing for, anyway?" Or you may just be saying "this is boring." But ignoring that second comment, I'll explain that this wear plate supports the shank of the 18's radial Tomlinson coupler as it sits in the coupler carrier. The above photo shows the front coupler of the car after I had jacked up and reinstalled the original wear plate.

Shown in a closeup view are the coupler shank (red star), the binder casting bolted in place across the bottom of the coupler carrier (green arrow), and the wear plate sitting atop that (blue arrow). The coupler shank doesn't sit directly on the wear plate. There's a C-channel (yellow arrow) that creates a void for the control cables going to the electrical connection buttons alongside the coupler head (the cables are behind the yellow arrow).

Now, here's the rear coupler after I jacked it up and installed the newly made wear plate.

Notice anything different? That C-channel is missing - and until Sunday, so was the wear plate. The rear coupler has just been sitting on the coupler carrier binder with the control cables serving as a cushion. That's not great for the cables, plus the coupler sits a bit too low, so that's why we're working on fixing this. The next step will be to install a new C-channel. Stay tuned.

I also made some more progress on the 63.

The pinstripes across the doors received a first coat of maroon, as shown above; one more coat, plus a little touch-up on the ivory stripe where the masking tape took off some of the paint, will complete the belt rail striping. After dinner, I also climbed up on the roof and spot-primed all the locations where the paint had chipped off and revealed bare metal. Fortunately, the roof paint is mostly in relatively good shape, just faded.

As usual, plenty of other projects were in progress. Mikey and Jimmy were both rebuilding J-governors in the car shop. Zach and others brought the Electroliner out of the barn and dropped a faulty MG set so we can send it to the motor shop for rebuilding, though the train was already back in the barn when I arrived.

Late in the afternoon, after revenue service ended, the line train emerged from Barn 6 and headed out onto the railroad. Shown above, Jimmy and Good Nick are riding the head end of the shove while Zach (unfortunately obscured by a line pole) runs the steeplecab. Richard, Mikey, Jim W., and a visitor from San Francisco whose name I have managed to forget were also along. The crew spent a few hours checking and tightening hardware along the main line west of Johnson Siding.

Finally, I stopped by Nick Kallas's office to find him engaged in the quixotic task of cleaning his desk. He showed me a 1933 broadsheet flyer about the Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago. It was probably 20 pages long and included plenty of ads, including a couple of intriguing ones.

Here's an ad for the Hotel Baker in St. Charles, which of course is still there, advertising interurban service. The Geneva Branch of the CA&E wouldn't be abandoned for another four years.

And here's a nice ad for the Surface Lines, including a picture of their then-most modern cars, the Peter Witts, or "Sedans" as railfans called them. A year later, the 7001 and then 4001 would arrive, displacing the existing fleet of red cars as the most modern (if not necessarily the most useful) equipment on the system.