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)

Green Bay Car Update

We know your heart is full of questions. What's the meaning of life? How long is a piece of string? How high is up? And what in the world is that enormous green thing without any trolley poles doing out in Barn 4? Fortunately, our indefatigable investigative iournalist Gregg Wolfersheim has all the answers! He has sent in this progress report on Green Bay & Western 109.

Ralph is fitting small pieces of oak trim where it was previously notched out for wall partitions.

Not to be outdone by Ralph, we see Jack working on other pieces of trim. This has been a time consuming process, but it makes the car more complete.

On the outside, I fitted some vertical trim near the ends. Now in primer but, soon will be painted green.

The west door was sanded and partially primed.

Here are some of the trim pieces installed. The large square pieces replace several that were missing or cracked from the holes used to hold up the baggage racks. Below them, are several smaller pieces now stained. Varnish will be applied once everything is up.

From top to bottom: A short piece right under the baggage rack. Then two flat pieces to fill a gap. Below them is a molded section created by using the table saw and the router in the wood shop.

All of the brass hardware in the car is being polished up.

Near the top of the woodwork, Ralph made another piece to fill in. He had to get creative with some blocks and a clamp on the baggage rack to hold the piece until the glue dries.

The emergency brake pull rope was installed. However, the valve is long gone under the car. But, at least there is a representation of the system with the rope running through the eyes in the ceiling.

And, finally, the door is back in place with new guides in primer for the sliding sash.

Tuesday News

Let's start with the bad news first.  Buzz helped me get the #1 train door from the 460 up onto the operating table, and it turned out to be in worse health than I had expected.  Here on the inside there's a metal plate.  

It turns out this plate is badly rusted in a few spots and needs to be replaced.  It's just a rectangular piece of sheet metal, so that shouldn't be too difficult.

 

The main problem seemed to be that the bottom of both stiles and parts of the rail are partly rotted out.  It's actually worse than it looks here.

The lower few inches of both stiles are bad, and both tenons on the rail are completely rotted away.  The door was just being held together by the metal plates.

Not quite good enough for regular service.

I started by planing down a couple of spare pieces of wood for use as replacements, but there's a lot more to be done.  I'll do what I can at home.  So let's turn to what other guys are accomplishing.

Here Buzz is repairing a window for the CSL 144.  

Tim continued to work on the new pieces for the floor of the 268.  No pictures this time, but you just have to imagine the constant noise and sawdust.  That's the price of progress.

Speaking of noise, out in the barn Steve Keller was needle-chipping seat frames for the 268.

And Gerry and John were working on the wiring for the 306.

Finally, Gregg, Jack, and Ralph from the Steam Team were working on the 109 again.

Great progress is being made on the interior.

And we certainly welcome and appreciate inter-departmental cooperation!

Finally, this happened too early in the morning for me to get a picture, but several inches of concrete were poured on the floor in the south office room, to raise it to the same level as the rest of the offices and above mean high tide.   But I don't know how exciting a picture of a concrete floor would be anyways.