We have more progress from Friday to report, and also a photo gallery from a side trip I'm sure you'll enjoy! So don't touch that dial.
To start with, I cleaned up and installed the scraper cylinder for the third rail beam in the shop. It's rather heavy and unwieldy, but it can be done. It's not quite finished, but getting close.
And then it all got a coat of primer. Apart from the fuses, it looks pretty good, if I say so myself. The fuses are pointing in the wrong direction, and the bolt holding them is frozen, but I think with more Kroil and more torque it can be released. And then everything will be painted black.
Tim was working on the 1268, of course, and today I got a couple of pictures. The woodwork looks fabulous. We talked about the dangers of these ancient baseboard heaters in a wood car. I think the best solution is to disconnect the wiring so that they can't possibly be used, but he's not so sure.
And of course, the other completed parts of the interior look just as good.
Gregg was working again on the 109. He prefers to take his own pictures of the progress and mail them to us, so watch this space. And as always, if you have an IRM project that you want publicized, send in your pictures and sufficient explanations, and wait for results. Chances are, you'll be satisfied! Or your pixels back.
Roger Kramer showed up in Barn 4 and was looking at the various projects. He invited me over to his place to see what's going on, and that's something that I haven't done for quite a while. Sorry! So, let's take...
A Visit to Barn 10
Roger has several active projects, and the first we'll look at is the Palm Lane parlor obs, which was later used by a carnival company and modified, but they're working on a complete restoration. It needs some body and fender work. Here you can see where the body posts rusted out at the belt rail, and have been carefully trimmed for welding in new pieces.
The welding is being done by
Marcus Ray, seen below with the boss. This has got to be a tough job, but luckily we have volunteers who are up to the challenges.
This part of the interior is still in good condition. It's a big project.
Next, we took a brief look at the Milwaukee Road buffeteria. There are various things that need to fixed, but on the whole the car appears to be in good condition.
It was hard to get a good picture of the kitchen, which looks like most dining car kitchens -- long and narrow. Working in this environment can't be easy.
And then they are working on the interior of one of the Rock Island cars. It will look great.
Finally, we paid a visit to the dome car.
Replacing the damaged windows will be difficult and expensive. The seating area at one end of the car has been completely gutted, as structural work is done
The other end is pretty complete, and shows what the interior will look like.
3 comments:
I have some experience with the electric heaters in 600 volt cars. There should be an asbestos string running through the coiled heater wire. This string prevents the ends of the coils from spring outward and hitting the case if the coil wire breaks. This is absolutely required. The issue with these heaters is that if the resistance wire breaks and hits the case, there may be so much resistance in the heater wire that the fuse will not blow, so the case remains energized and drawing current. The only other issue I have with these heaters is they can get dirt and debris in them that will smoke when hot. This just requires they be disassembled and cleaned if they have been out of service for years.
I never found a practical way to renew missing asbestos string without replacing the heater element. To replace heater elements I have the appropriate resistance wire wound into a closed spring. Typically the spring is 12 to 18 inches long and 1 1/2” in diameter. In this form it is easy to fish the string through the center. We currently use ceramic string. Then a vee shaped form is made from long 2 X4 s and the spring is stretched to the finish length making sure the string is through the entire length. The stretched coil, with the string inside, is then wrapped around the ceramic core and tied off to produce a finished heater coil. The heater wire alloy has varied greatly from one car to another, so I have a sample tested to determine the correct alloy for each project. It is best to replace all the elements that are in series to get the same resistance on all of them.
On the Sacramento Northern the heaters are mounted under the seat frames. Apparently there was one case in the past where a heater failure energized a seat frame with 1500 volts, with the expected unfortunate results. To avoid a repeat of this, durning the restoration of SN 1005 all the seat frames were wired together and to the frame of the car. This was done under the floor.
David Johnston
It's great to see more work being done on IRM's biblical collection of passenger cars! I forget how many heavyweight Pullmans they own, they could put together a whole period-length train!
Hopefully their operable streamlined car fleet comes back online soon! All the covered wagons they own and hardly any streamlined passenger cars trail behind them! Here's to a future recreated period streamliner!
Thanks for the detailed information, David. It just sounds like a lot of effort and expense to replace the heater elements. And since I started my career working on a car that had severe fire damage (although not due to the installed heaters) I quickly decided that any wood cars I restored were never going to have working heat. We generally don't run the interurban cars during the winter anyhow. But it's up to the department whether some of the steel cars get new heat, and your experience in these things can be very valuable. Thanks!
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