Frank writes...
There were a few different things happening on Sunday, but the most consequential for me - if not for the museum - was that I completed painting work on Shaker Heights 63.
This involved climbing up on the roof and painting the whole center - anything that couldn't be reached from the top of a ladder - as well as the trolley base shroud grey. Now, there's an asterisk to this: although painting work is complete, I'd still like to apply a handful of decals or stickers at some point. These include the "Westbound Entrance" and "Eastbound Entrance" legends next to the doors and, more noticeably, the RTA emblems. I'd really love to get a copy of a vector file for that RTA emblem, which by the way, is still used by GCRTA. I've tried reaching out to them a couple of times with no success yet. Anyone know someone with that agency who could hook us up?
Let's move to a more important project: the 36. It turns out we will want to chain the truck frame to the rail so we can freely jack up the spring plank, but where the truck was sitting on track 43, that's not possible because the pavement comes right up to the railhead. We're not complaining - we're glad it does - but we needed to move the truck over to track 42. Joel, shown here running the forklift, and Richard moved a pair of 4000 trailer trucks out of the way and then shifted the 36 truck over. The entire operation probably took 15 minutes. It's almost like they've done this before!
The other priority for the day was removing the two third rail beams from the R side of the 319 for replacement of the wooden beams. A huge thank you goes out to Mikey and two of his friends, who were all indispensable in getting the beams removed from the car and moved back to the shop.
After dinner, Steven removed the thermostat from the 18. Above is a photo showing how the wires are connected; the wire with the tag goes on the "57/60" terminal and the other wire goes on the "R-881-C" (or something like that) side.
Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how this thing works and virtually no idea how to troubleshoot it, so I'm hoping better minds can lend a hand. Our goal here is to get the heat working correctly in case the opportunity arises to use the 18 during the colder months. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.
In other news, Nick and Greg were disconnecting the 600V connection to Barn 7 so that portion of the exterior sheathing could be replaced; Jimmy and Steven were in train service; Brian was working on air brake stuff; and Jerry - helped at times by Richard, JD, Steven, and others - was working on the CTA 6600s.
