Hicks Car Works: BB2 Update

Frank writes...

The rest of the department was out on the railroad working on the overhead on Sunday, but for me it was a return to the "lean-three" to continue working on the 18's National BB2 air compressor.

It took another hour and a half or so, but I finished slotting the commutator. Above, it's hard to tell, but this photo was taken with only six or eight slots to go.

After I took a break to head over to the 18, Richard provided guidance in the next step, "raking" the slots. This just involves drawing the pointed end of a file down the length of each slot to knock any burrs off the edges of the bars. Following this work to smooth off the commutator, the comm itself is ready for testing, though there are a couple of other things we need to do first - not least of which is refilling the pump with oil! Thanks to Steven for the above "action shot" of yours truly.

Although I've brought my daughter out to IRM plenty of times for rides, this was her first time accompanying me on a "working" day. She seemed to enjoy herself. Here, she emulates my work on the air compressor, accompanied by her saying "fix, fix fix! BAM, BAM, BAM!" Yep, that pretty well sums up the recent maintenance history of this air compressor.

Anyway, after I finished with slotting but before the guys arrived back to instruct me in the finer points of commutator raking, it was over to the 18 to install some new advertising cards. Many thanks to Tim, who set us up with his printer, and Jim, who picked these up and brought them out to the museum. These are reproductions, of course, but they're printed on Mylar that's about the same thickness (and pliability) as the original cards. In theory, these should last pretty much forever without warping or suffering any water damage.

These are all circa-1950 designs, a definite improvement over the ones that have been in the car, which are mostly a mixture of 1970s/1980s ones that came with the 18 and 1920s repros that were printed by American Slide Chart for ARM a few decades back.

But we need your help!

It turns out that with the recent work on the CA&E steel cars, including casting new third rail beam parts and building new beams, we're out of money! The CA&E steel car restoration fund is at zero. We've printed extras of the car cards shown below for use in the 451 when its interior is complete, but we'd like to get several additional designs with more "local flavor" scanned, digitally restored, and reprinted. Please consider a donation to the CA&E Steel Car Fund to make this happen!

For a limited time only, you can sponsor one of the car cards shown below. These nice Mylar cards cost $30 each, so for every $30 you donate, email us and let us know which design(s) you'd like to sponsor. We'll put your name on the back of your card for when it goes into the 451. And, of course, any larger donations to support the purchase of paint for the upcoming repainting of the 451's interior are also very much appreciated. Click here and scroll down to Electric Car Restoration - CA&E Steel Cars to donate online, or just mail a check to the office with IRM as the payee and "RCAESTEEL" on the memo line. Thank you!