More Chipping

Frank writes…

Sunday was another day of needle-chipping inside the 451. The good news is that we're making real progress, and as far as needle-chipping is concerned, at least, the end is coming into sight... in the far distance.

Here's the progress at the end of the day. The main compartment is 10 windows long, so we're just shy of halfway done with needle-chipping the ceiling. That doesn't count the posts or the bulkheads, but those are also a lot easier because you're not working over your head. Of course, it also doesn't account for the wire-wheeling that will be necessary as the follow-up step. But that will go quicker.

Ted was hard at work for much of the afternoon wire-wheeling more baggage racks for the 451.

Zach was able to remove the partition door between the main compartment and smoker, as seen here. Thanks, Zach! He's got experience with this type of door thanks to having worked on North Shore cars that have the same mechanism. This door needs a bit of wood repair, but nothing major.

Zach also took it upon himself to repair the 451's spitter valve, shown here. He observed that this valve and the one on the 431 both have green paint on them, a very un-Wheaton-like color, so it's likely that they were bought off the shelf.

Here's the inside of the spitter valve after Zach cleaned it up. If memory serves, the piston he's holding is normally pushed up by the spring, visible to the right. When the pump is running, though, air pressure pushes the piston down, compressing the spring. When the pump stops, the piston returns to its normal position. At the midpoint of its travel, it briefly vents the tanks to atmosphere, allowing a momentary exhaust of air that "spits" out water sitting in the bottom of the tank. Nifty.

At the end of the day, once I'd gotten my fill of needle-chipping, I traced some letters off the partition.

Quiz time: do you remember what G, BC, and FV stand for?

Another end-of-the-day task was running a controller cover and MS switch cover from the 451, both of which were freshly painted back in 2010, over to Barn 2. The kind of paint we used 15 years ago is no longer available, but the Diesel Shop guys have volunteered to get the current "good" exterior paint variety matched to these samples. We appreciate it! The samples are in the foreground, in the back of the diesel shop's "gator," while in the background is the impressive new all-steel mezzanine in the southeast corner of Barn 2. I'm pretty sure that could support traction motors, if they wanted to store them up there. This area has come a long way since it was home to the 966!

Back in the car shop, some of the Saturday guys brought over a side door from the 460 that needs a bit of work. If you look closely, may notice that there's something wrong with the bottom rail. And if you look really closely, you may realize that there's no way to know for sure, because at some point the bottom rail became detached from the door and fled to parts unknown. Who knows - maybe it's in perfectly good condition, wherever it is. But a new one will be made and installed regardless.

In other news, Joel was moving parts, sorting rivets, and doing all kinds of other things to make Barn 4 and the shop extension more tidy and orderly. Zach spent much of the day working on air valves for the Charles City Western steeplecab, assisted by Richard. Tim was working on the 268/1268. Jimmy and Greg spent a very cold day out on the railroad, transferring signal feeder wires to new line poles. Dan devoted some time to investigating our stock of cutting shoes. Nick and Will were hard at work, too, though I'm afraid I didn't catch what they were working on. And Brian and Richard were working on S governors, making use of the air brake room, which has been mostly cleaned out of miscellaneous stuff, as shown above. The work bench on the left even has a nice new light fixture overhead so you can see what you're doing.