The Great Third Rail... Beam Project

Frank writes...

It's officially too cold to paint the 63 - Saturday was an unseasonable 68 degrees, but by the time I got to IRM Sunday the weather had reverted to more typical November temperatures in the 40s. That meant that the focus on Saturday was CA&E third rail beams.

With my father having completed two new third rail beams for the 460, it was time to retrieve two more beams and salvage the hardware so he can use it on the other two beams for that car. Our indefatigable president, Nick, and I hauled the two beams above into the "dirty room" at the new east end of the car shop. These came from Trolleyville and have been stored along Bruneau Drive for 15 years. (By the way, Nick coined the "project name" used here for the post title.)

These beams weren't usable when they arrived in 2010, and the condition of the wood hasn't improved. The first one partially disintegrated. But Richard and I were able to get all the hardware off both beams - many thanks to Richard for judicious application of heat as needed! - and the hardware was deposited on a wooden cart out in the barn where the two newly made beams had been put. I meant to take a photo but forgot. Richard also spent quite a while prepping a casting pattern that we are going to send to a foundry as part of an effort to cast more third rail beam hardware, since we don't have enough original beams for our entire fleet. Thanks, Richard!!

Later, I went over to Barn 8, used a jack to hold one of the 308's third rail beams in place, and unbolted it so I could remove these two bits. The plate on the left, which is a 5"x6" piece of 10-gauge steel, acts as a large washer, and there's one at each end of each beam where they bolt to the truck. On the right is a 6"x6-1/2"x3/4" steel plate with ridges that mesh into identical ridges on the trucks. These also go at both ends of each third rail beam, but on the back where the beams meet the truck. The idea here was that the height of each beam could be adjusted up and down easily in 1/4" increments, which was helpful to account for wheel wear. This isn't something we have to worry about at IRM, of course. I took measurements of both these items so we can start looking into options for replicating them for our new third rail beams.

There were also some miscellaneous projects underway, as always.

There was a lot of activity around the property getting ready for Happy Holiday Railway. Lights are going up all over the place and Christmas music was even being piped over the loudspeaker system in the afternoon as our tech folks checked all the speakers. Jim W. was hard at work putting up an extraordinary quantity of lights and other decorations in Barn 6. For the car shop's part, we had to move the line of storage cars currently occupying the connector track north about 30' or so because they want to spot the Harbor Belt caboose just north of the ruling curve on the streetcar line. It will presumably be festooned with lights once it's in place. Above, the first car to move was the TM container car.

Then a few of us pushed the next car, CTA 2008 (masquerading as "1992"), up to the container car. With its roller bearings, it moved easily and we didn't even need a car mover. This car is not part of the historic collection and is being stripped for parts.

In other news, Mike S. has been hard at work on our CSL air compressor wagon, AX545. It looks like virtually the entire thing except for the roof has now been needle-chipped and/or wire-wheeled.

Here's Nick again, this time testing the specific gravity of batteries for our CTA 2200s.

And now, a brief retrospective of the major project that the department has been working on the last couple of weeks. You may recall that New Jersey Transit 4, our ex-Minneapolis PCC car, was brought over to Barn 4. The reason it was brought over was to have its narrow street railway wheels, which are prone to derailing on our track, replaced with full-width railroad-profile wheels. Back in October, we shipped out a car's worth of PCC wheels obtained from the CTA back in (I think?) the 1970s. These were supposedly designed for the 5000s, so they didn't have the right holes cut in them. A generous benefactor in the local business community had the holes cut in these wheels, so NJT 4 was brought over for some "foot work."

This was a couple of weeks ago, and the guys started on the front left wheel. On the left is Bob, who lent us a battery-powered impact drill. The resilient wheels on a postwar PCC like this have an inner set of bolts ringing the wheel hub and an outer set of larger bolts around the wheel rim. These bolts hold together the axle hub, wheel, and some rubber spacers.

Hiccup number one was that some of the inner bolts on wheel #1 didn't want to budge. Here's Richard applying some heat, though with a rubber spacer so nearby, this could only be done sparingly. Unfortunately, two of the bolts just did not want to move, and on this wheel they were so close to the wheel hub that the impact drive wouldn't fit onto the bolt. Photo by Ted Kuhn.

After quite a bit of fighting, the guys started working on wheel #2, the left wheel on the second axle. For unknown reasons, this had a different size axle, so the impact drive fit just fine over the inside ring of bolts. Photo by Ted Kuhn.

In just a few minutes, the wheel came off. Here you can see a rubber spacer. By this time it was late, so work was suspended until the following weekend.

A week ago now, I came out to find that the guys had been hard at work that Saturday. Unfortunately, they had come up against hiccup number two. In the above photo, near the left and just to the right of that spring you can see the end of the "torque arm." Surrounding it are some bolts, though they're missing in this photo. These bolts clear a narrow-tread wheel just fine, but they foul a wide-tread wheel (the new wheel is seen to the right, of course). Now, Shaker Heights solved this by using bolts with heads ground down to a thinner profile. Unfortunately, on NJT 4, these aren't bolts, they're studs. And grinding down a stud with a nut on it is not a great plan if it means only a couple of threads are still engaged. The solution? Drill out the studs and replace them with bolts.

And voila: on Sunday, wheel #2 is completed and the new wide-tread wheel is installed. On Saturday, the guys drilled out those studs and installed bolts that clear the wheel. One down, seven to go.

So here's Jimmy working on wheel #4, the left wheel on the #4 axle, this weekend. Notice anything different? If you answered "are those Allen bolts?!?" you would be correct - the inner ring of bolts on this truck, for reasons I cannot fathom, uses Allen bolts. We have a drive for these on order. Stay tuned; with time, all the wheels on NJT 4 should be replaced, at which point we'll give it a thorough mechanical and electrical inspection. If everything's in good shape - and for a PCC that has sat for nearly 25 years, that's a big if - then it may be due for some testing to see whether we can put it into service.