Steady Progress

Frank writes…

There were three of us working on the 451 for much of the day on Sunday, so a lot got done. Many thanks to Ashtin and Joseph for all their hard work!

The MVP for the day was Ashtin; before I arrived, Ashtin got Joseph set up wire-wheeling baggage racks and then grabbed his own wire wheel and attacked the smoker. Joseph made great progress on the baggage racks, while Ashtin completed wire-wheeling pretty much all the wall and ceiling panels in the smoker that had previously been needle-chipped. There are still a few edges we need to address, and we want to lightly sand the Masonite panels under the windows, but the smoker is most of the way toward being ready for paint.

I spent most of my time in the main compartment, needle-chipping more of the ceiling and wall panels. At one point, Ashtin and I took a break and went over to the 453 to compare the Futura lettering artwork that Buzz has painstakingly recreated to the original lettering still visible under that car's paint. The verdict: it looks great! Before too long, we hope to cut vinyl masks so we can spray the lettering onto the 451. After all that, Ashtin spent a while needle-chipping the partition between the main compartment and smoker. After dinner, Greg helped me to make progress on removing the partition door, though we still need to detach it from the floor. And I was told that the Saturday guys had installed the air piping from the air compressor to the tanks. We still need to add drain cocks and air gauges before the car can be pumped up, but rapid progress is being made.

As usual, there was plenty of other work going on. Joel was hard at work cleaning out the old "roof booth" area of the barn, moving spare parts out of the newly usable air brake room, and generally moving and sorting parts. Greg and Jimmy were out making overhead wire repairs at the west end of the railroad. And Good Nick was working on the "small" substation, shown above. I briefly helped him remove the breaker, pictured on the cart. It will be replaced by the newer and more advanced model shown last week.

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Friday Report

Friday was a relatively quiet day in the shop.  I spent most of the day working on the 460 door, Tim was painting the 268 again, of course, and Gregg and Jack were painting the 109.

The 460's train door is nearly finished.  It's mechanically complete, and mostly just needs more paint.  Here's the outside surface -- pretty much ready to hang a headlight on.

On the inside, I installed the new steel plate that Gerry made to replace the old one.  It turned out that the frame was not quite square, so although he made the plate to the correct dimensions, it still needed to be ground down in order to fit.  Gregg helped me with that, and also with installing some bolts.

Now I just need to match the paint.

Here's a small part of what Tim was doing on the 268:

And down at the other end of the barn, the B&G guys were installing part of the trolley wire bridge which will enable us to run cars under power through the open door.  Just like downtown!

Update on That Coach in Barn 4

Our intrepid reporter on all things Coach Department, Gregg Wolfersheim, has somehow found himself marooned in Barn 4, the land of electrics. Fortunately for absolutely everyone involved, though, he's not at a loss for news, because he's found a passenger car there - and it's even actively being worked on! He has sent us the below summary of recent events.

Here is the west door back in place and painted.

The inside. New molding was used to hold the bottom panel in place. The old molding was split from being nailed in place.

This is the ceiling collar for the stove pipe. I needle chipped it first, then polished it up.

The collar back in place. It now matches the other one at the east end of the car.

Awhile back, Jack made the molding that goes over the single sash. Here it has been applied, and is getting painted.

The finished product. The other side is partially done. We're trying to have a contractor make the longer ones for the double sash arches. Hopefully they will show up soon.

And, a final shot of the west end of the car. The overhang has been painted. The lower sections are next, with the railings and platform to follow in black.

Have a Seat -- or at least a Cushion

Wednesday was another productive day at IRM.  I drove the Museum van to Bellwood again to pick up the next set of newly-upholstered seats for the 451.  They do a beautiful job at Kustom.

In the past we've usually loaded the seat cushions and backs into the van piece by piece, but the guys I was working with this time decided it would be easier to just use their forklift to put the pallets into the van and skip most of the hard work.  So they should also be easier to unload into the barn, and we get a couple of nice pallets as a bonus.  What's not to like?

I also like the label "Cushion Museo".   Actually, their warehouse is a sort of a cushion museum.  They've got all sizes and types.   Now all they need is labels, and advertising, and....

But back to trains.  When I returned from the seat journey, I saw that Gerry had indeed made a new plate for the 460 door, and it's nicely painted on both sides.  I'm not quite ready to install it yet, though.  But thanks!  Anyway, I made more adjustments to the new wood pieces and attached them with screws and epoxy.  Next step will be primer.  

What a difference two days can make!  The office building looks much better than it did.

And I'm sure a lot happened in the shop while I was on the visit to Bellwood.  Here Gregg is artistically adding another coat of paint to the 109.

And finally, wow!!   This is the front end of the 28.  Just as good as new!

Monday Brief

Today we have another brief report on just a couple of the typical weekday projects, all of which are going along steadily.

Painting continues on the Michigan Electric car.

Work continues on the 306, of course.  The electrical system has needed almost complete replacement.

And here is the east end which already has its wiring finished; work continues on the west end.

This may not look familiar, but it's the south wall of the office building, being rebuilt by contractors.

I spent the day working on the 460's door again, and good progress is being made.  In this picture you can see that the new parts are nearing completion; they still need some adjustment to fit properly.  The new parts will be held in with a combination of screws, mortising, and epoxy.  And they will clear the threshold with sufficient clearance to avoid this problem recurring.

This metal plate is on the inside of the door.  As you can see, it's partly rusted away.  Gerry has agreed to replace it, and today he picked out a piece of spare sheet metal that will work well.  Thanks!!!

Progress on the 451

Frank writes...

Super Bowl Sunday featured more needle-chipping in the 451.

Many thanks to Greg and Jimmy, who during the week had completed needle-chipping the ceiling in the 451's smoker and made tremendous progress. .They had just about completed the rest of the compartment. I did a little bit of touch-up, including chipping the posts down to the floor and the closet doorway, but that was about all. Above is the view from the end of the car looking toward the partition and the main compartment; below is the view looking toward the platform.

We're not 100% done with needle-chipping in the smoker; there are a few wooden trim pieces still to take down, and then we can chip the metal around those. But other than that, we're ready to move on to the next steps, namely wire-wheeling the metal and lightly sanding the particle-board panels under the windows to prep everything for paint.

Above, here's the "before" view looking from the partition into the main compartment. It's obvious that the paint is failing badly in some areas, especially over the windows and in certain areas of the ceiling. Don't get too used to that tan!

By the end of the day, I'd made some progress in the main compartment, particularly on the first ceiling section. I'd like to think that holding a needle-chipper over my head is good exercise, but I guess we'll see.

In that earlier photo, the baggage racks were still in place along the R side of the car, but thanks to Greg, Good Nick and Bob, we got those taken down and removed from the car. They're now ready to be wire-wheeled. In the above photo, you can see all of the 451's baggage racks as well as, in the foreground, the air strainer and piping to the air compressor. More on that later!

We want to take the interior doors off so they can be stripped and repainted on the bench. Greg got the door to the "equipment closet" off and it had this UL tag dated September 23, 1945.

Zach was working on a brush holder for the 451; the car's motors have been given a preliminary megger test that reveals none are shorted, but the motors are pretty dirty and a couple of brush holders have broken springs that will need attention. One of our goals is to see whether we can get the motors cleaned up enough to run them without having to send them out for rebuilding.

Speaking of mechanical progress, on Saturday, the guys got the 451's air compressor running! It's not yet piped in; one or two pipe fittings are on order and should arrive soon. In the meantime, it was tested "not under load" and seemed to run fine, though of course the real test will be to see whether it can pump up the car. Zach pointed out that this is a late-model DH-25 with disc valves instead of bottle valves. We have a few others of this type in our collection, including under the Electroliner and under at least one or two of the North Shore cars.

In other news, I got a brief tour of the air brake room from Brian, who has been working with Joel to empty this space - for many years the ironically named "clean room" - of the various accumulated things that had been clogging it up. They've also set up a small work bench between the 3-T (left) and 3-UE racks, shown here.

Above is a photo that Brian took from the chair at his workbench looking east, where Jimmy is using our spring tester during the process of rebuilding a safety valve for the 451. Brian is also working on rebuilding the car's feed valve and governor, which mercifully is an S-type and not a J. Once more "stuff" is cleared out of this room, the bench Jimmy is working at will become the primary work space.

And Nick was working on this fast-acting breaker that will be installed in our smaller substation. You may recall that we have two substations, the "big" one in the building that normally powers the main line east of the East Switch, and the "little" one (by size, at least) in the steel box next to the substation building. This one normally powers the property and the west end of the main line, but at the moment it's out of service. This breaker, which Randy Anderson obtained for us many years ago, is going to be installed in the smaller substation to get it working again. Nick observed that the breaker in that substation that just failed typically took about 70 milliseconds to open in the event of a fault, while this one should take somewhere around 10-30 milliseconds. So, that's good.

There was other stuff happening, too, including additional progress on the 451 and (of course) progress on other projects. A huge thank you goes out to everyone who is driving the work on the 451 forward!

Thursday Shop Report

Thursday was another busy day in the shop.  I have just a few pictures of what was going on.  In the morning I put together another third rail beam after jointing, ripping, gluing, and so on. 

But the main project was the train door for the 460, of course.  I've started by making a repro bottom rail, but that was left at home  (on purpose).  I've planned out how the new wood will be patched into the door, and the patches to the stiles were taken home for fitting, and so on.  This should work out well.

As mentioned last time, there's a metal plate that goes on the inside of the door that was partly rusted out.  It appears to me we have several spare pieces of sheet metal on hand that could be used to make a replacement, by anyone who has experience with sheet metal.   That would be appreciated.

And of course other projects were going along well.  Here we see a couple of newly-repainted windows for the 109.

And the Michigan Electric 28 is being painted.  The front end looks great!  At the bottom right you can see the front train door which has been painted too.

Tim has started installing the new floor in the 268.  This is one of those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, but it didn't come in a box.  He had to make them himself.

Fred and Gerry were working on putting together the fuse box on the roof of the 306, but I couldn't get a picture very easily.

And Phil was working on wiring in the cabs.

Finally, Gregg, Jack, and Ralph continued making progress on the Green Bay car, but I'll let them publicize their own work.  

Barn 6 Switching

When Barn 15 is approved for occupancy, we will be doing a lot of switching. I mean pretty much all the departments, not just the Electric Car Department. There will be equipment rearranged in just about every barn. For the Car Department's part, we're getting a jump start on some of these switch moves. Late Saturday afternoon into the evening, the switch crews were hard at work on tracks 63 and 64, and our fearless freelance photographers Joel Ahrendt and Zach Ehlers were kind enough to send in photos. These are not necessarily in correct chronological order.

Here's a beautiful sight: a four-car North Shore train with two Silverliners leading two cars in economy green. (ZE)

And another view. The train is on the tail track, of course. (ZE)

What's better than a four-car North Shore train? Why, a five-car North Shore train, of course! The 160 still has a traction motor out at the shop for rebuilding, so it hasn't seen much use lately, but it was MUed with the other four cars for the switch move. (ZE)

West Towns 141 had some particularly cold (read as: solidified) crater grease in its gear pans, but it finally got moving. (JA)

The 1797 and 1754 are shown spotted over on the Yard 8 Connector track. (JA)

One car that is seen outside very rarely is Milwaukee Electric 1129, painted and lettered inaccurately as the 1111 many decades ago. (ZE)

Here's another view of the 1129. This is a single-ended car and only has four doors: its two train doors, a motorman's door at the front right, and a single passenger access door at the rear right. (JA)

One of the most beautiful cars in the collection, the "Talisman," also comes outside only rarely. (JA)

An unusual view of the entire south half of Barn 6 completely emptied of equipment. (JA)

The 504 was the first back into the barn. This will be its new display location, at the west end of track 64 instead of the west end of track 63, where it has lived for many years now. I believe the plan is for the 1129 to go off display and join the "Menominee" in Barn 13. (JA)