Disassembly Day

Frank writes...

The big news on Sunday was major progress on the project to replace the leaf springs in the 36's trailer truck.

When I arrived, Dan, Brian, and Greg were already hard at work on the truck. Above, Greg is on the forklift and Dan is to the right. They've lifted the truck bolster, taking the weight of the spring plank off the swing links, which allowed them to remove the pins holding those in place. However, the swing links themselves have what are effectively thick bosses where the pins are attached, so those prevented the spring plank from dropping.

To move the swing links aside and free up the bolster, it was also necessary to remove the top pins that the swing links hang from. Here, the spring plank has been blocked up and then the bolster weighted down with the fork extenders. That got the weight off the swing link bosses and allowed Brian (left) and Dan to drive out the pins.

With that, the swing links could be moved aside, and voila - the truck bolster was lifted free of the truck!

Here's what was underneath the truck bolster: a pair of three-wide elliptical, or leaf, springs. The car sits on the truck bolster, the truck bolster sits on these, these sit on the spring plank, and the spring plank is hung from the main truck frame from the swing links.

We removed the leaf springs, which was pretty easy because the assemblies aren't bolted together, they are just held together by gravity and the restricted movement of the bolster. You may notice something amiss with this particular spring: a couple of the "leaves" are broken. This is why the 36 was taken out of service. The plan is to replace all leaf springs on this truck with new ones manufactured to the original specifications.

While we have the truck apart, we intend to clean it up and repaint it. Greg and Steven helped rig up the spring plank and lift it out of the truck for easier cleanup.

Of course, that wasn't the only thing being worked on. For my part, I spent much of the rest of my time working on spare parts-related things. One of the projects was moving some spare seat frames from the 309, shown here, to a new storage location. Thanks to Steven, Ashtin, Will, and Richard for their help with this work!

The shop was abuzz with activity. Jimmy, Richard, Brian, Steven, Ashtin, Nick, and Will were working on various things, plus Zach and Joel were operating during the day. Seen above, the streetcar contingent was present, too. Steve is up on the ladder, removing parts from the roof of the 755, while Mike looks on. This past week Mike repainted the running boards on the 19, visible on the left. They look great!

We Have Liftoff

Frank writes...

Sunday was a day for a significant step forward toward getting the 36 back into service. Since we found a couple of broken leaf springs in the trailer truck two years ago, we've been planning to pull that truck so we could replace the springs. Various circumstances, almost all of them surrounding the construction work on Barn 4, pushed back this work.

But Sunday was the day! On Saturday, after inspection work on CTA 22 was completed, the guys brought the 36 over to the pit, pulled the kingpins, and removed the top rod from the trailer truck end. Above, shortly after I arrived, the guys pulled the car out of the barn and positioned the jacks. The main workers on this project, from start to finish, were Nick, Greg, and Brian.

The first thing was to jack up the car and remove the truck. That was the easy part. Above, Nick brings over some chains to lift the truck off the rails while Andy helpfully offers his usual mixture of folksy anecdotes, homespun wisdom, and unsolicited advice.

With assistance from Joel, Greg ran the forklift and, using the fork extenders, carried the 36's truck over to track 43. We didn't have time to start the work of removing the body bolster so we can extract the leaf springs, but that will happen soon.

In the meantime, Brian and Will brought the shop truck - a CTA 4000 motor truck - over to roll under the car. This is where things got a little complicated: it turned out that the center bearing on the shop truck was higher than we wanted, and that meant removing shims from under the shop truck's center bearing. But of course the bolts were rusted, so they needed to be heated (hence the torch set visible in the below photo). This job was done by Jimmy and Will, after which Joel used a large hammer to persuade the shims to detach from the center bearing casting. This all took a little time, but the work progressed steadily. A huge THANK YOU goes out to everyone who helped, including Nick, Greg, Brian, Joel, Jimmy, Will, and Andy.

Once the center bearing on the 4000 truck had been reinstalled minus its shims, the 36 was jacked up a bit to clear the truck's brake rigging. Above, Brian is over to the right "conducting the orchestra" consisting of Nick, running the jack at the left, and Greg, running the jack on the other side of the car. Then, we pushed the truck under the car, lowered the car, dropped in the king pins, and voila.

The car is still at an angle, but that's not a big problem for low-speed switch moves, and we hope it won't be like this for very long anyway. As soon as we have time, we'll remove the bolster keepers from atop the 36's truck, lift off the bolster, and remove the leaf spring packs so we can get the springs replaced. Fingers crossed that before long, we'll have all four of our "serviceable" wood cars cleared for service again.

I was busy with the 36 project the whole day, but in other news, Sunday marked 100 years to the day since the 714 first entered service on the North Shore. Zach and his crew marked the occasion by posting a nice sandwich board up at the depot and running the car along with the 251, which recently had some air compressor wiring work done to return it to revenue operation. It sounded like all went well.

In the evening, it was time to wrap up the winter's work on the 460. Nick, Steven, Brian, and I took the two rebuilt doors over to the car, hoisted them up, and screwed them into place. Thanks to Steven for taking the above photo, showing Nick and yours truly upstairs and Brian downstairs installing the side door. I'd like to do a little more futzing with the train door to get it to seat a bit more comfortably, but the car is now ready for service.

Sunday Scenes

I was out of town for the past two weeks, but now it's time to get back to work.  One of the current projects, as noted before, is to reupholster all of the seats in the three CA&E St. Louis cars.  Here's what the interior of the 451 looks like before starting.  I worked for a while on this.

The Shay was fired up for the first time this season on Saturday.  Here we see some visitors watching as it pulls the caboose train out of Barn 9.

The 36 was over the pit for inspection.  Most of it went well, of course, but our sharp-eyed inspectors noticed that a leaf spring on the trailer truck had several broken leaves, so this car is out of service until that can be replaced.  Finding a leaf spring of the correct type may not be easy.

The next project was to install the new bearings in the 309.  Here we are sitting on the tail track, waiting for our turn over the pit.  This is still the pride of the fleet, I think.

Turning around, we have a sight you probably don't see at many large museums: our Executive Director is mowing the lawn.  Keeps him out of trouble.

Since the construction of the Barn 4 extension, the trolley wire over the pit lead track has been deactivated.  So getting equipment in and out requires the help of a locomotive.  Here the 36 is slowly on its way back to Barn 8.  You can't see him, but Frank is in the cab of the 36, so he can apply the brakes if necessary.  

 to be continued....

Frank writes...

When I arrived, I helped adjust the brakes on the 36 and take a look at the broken leaf spring. The car can move around without any real risk, since only one of the three leaf springs on that side of the truck has any broken pieces, but we still don't want to run the car at high speed in this condition. For better or worse, fixing this will likely require more time than anything; we need to find a shop truck, put the 36 on that, then take apart the 36's truck to replace the spring before reversing everything. At least the affected truck is the trailer truck, so we won't have to pull motors.

Anyway, let's pick up where my father left off. When we got the 309 on the pit, we jacked up the motor to pull the axle cap. I owe a huge THANK YOU to Zach and Will, who helped with this dirty and exhausting job. Zach had done this kind of truck work before, which was good, because that meant one of us knew what he was doing! We got the axle cap off and, luckily, we were able to slide the new bearing into place without having to pull the motor farther away from the axle. The photo above shows the new bearing in place after the axle cap was reinstalled.

Here are the halves of the old bearing. Obviously we'll hang onto this, both in case we have any issues with the new bearing but also long-term just to have as a working spare.

The car motivated itself outside the door so that we could oil all the axle caps. It's nice to see a CA&E car on third rail territory without that pesky overhead wire over it, isn't it?

Zach took this photo of yours truly putting oil into the axle cap with the new bearing. It was just about time for dinner at this point, so we moved the 309 back over to Barn 8. At some point we'll want to do a few test trips, regularly checking the bearing temperature with the laser thermometer, to make sure that this bearing is performing as expected.

And now for something completely different.

After dinner, I grabbed the vermilion/orange paint we had matched a couple of months ago and headed over to Shaker Heights 63. I was able to roll the entire side of the car below the belt rail, minus the doors, in about an hour. It will obviously need at least one, possibly two, more coats, but that was expected given how poorly orange tends to cover. I'll also need to follow up with a brush to get all the nooks and crannies, but that's also just part of the process. Stay tuned for more updates on the orangeification of the 63.

Spring Cleaning

I brought out two new seat parts -- a stationary seat cushion and the third and final walkover seat back -- to install in the 36.  They both look good, except for being obviously newer and cleaner than the old parts.  But that's a common problem when you replace only the defective items.  Anyway, I think the rattan replacement program has worked out well, if I may say so myself.

In the main compartment, you can easily spot the three new seat backs.  I can only hope that after a period of regular service they will start to blend in.

And it was time for some spring cleaning in Barn 8, but nothing worth taking a picture of.

Speaking of cleaning, it appears that Tim has taken up a new occupation: ironing!  A lot of us at IRM tend to wear rumpled clothes, so he might have a lucrative business here, except...

He's actually ironing car cards.  Old car cards tend to get damp and wrinkled.  It turns out that by placing a linen tracing paper over the card and running a steam iron over it, he can make it flatter.

It may not be perfect, but certainly better than before.  How much starch do you want with that?

Meanwhile, the Bunny Hop was in full swing, the Track Dept. were busy, and lots of other things were going on.  As I always say, you just have to be there in person.

Rapidly Replacing Rattan

On Wednesday I brought out the second reupholstered rattan seat back and installed it in the 36.

It looks good -- probably too good.  Any modelers out there have some weathering secrets for rattan?

Anyway, the third and final back is being varnished and should be ready soon.  For my next project, I went through the car and took a closer look at the seat cushions.  One of the corner stationary seats had a bad rip in the rattan, so I took it home for repair.

 There's also one walkover cushion that has a worn-out spot, and it should probably be recovered too.  And then one of the old-style seat backs has a noticeable rip.  So there's more to do.  I have plenty of new material.

And then I spent some time rearranging parts and tools in storage.  While we're in Barn 8, let's look at the nice new door on the 213.  It's close to the barn wall, so the angle isn't the best, but you get the idea.  The glass still needs to be installed; it was left out to eliminate the chance of breaking it while mounting the door.

Pete and Fritz were working on building the next 213 door.  Here they are running stock through the big jointer.

And Tim and Buzz and Victor and Bill and others were working on their projects too.

Finally, when I got the first stationary seat cushion home, I started by taking some pictures for future reference.

One amusing mathematical fact: these stationary seats are exactly 24" wide.  When these cars were built, the ERR journal article claimed that the seating capacity was 56.  But the only way you can get to 56 people is if you have two persons sitting on each of the stationary seats.  That might work if all your passengers are ten year olds, but otherwise it's pretty much impossible.  48 is a much more reasonable number.

36 Inspection

Car 36 was left over the pit, as you may have read in an earlier post, so when I arrived Monday morning, it was time to get to work.  I tightened up all the bolts on the compressor cradle, connected the supply pipe, made the electrical connections, and topped off the oil on our shiny not-so-new rebuilt compressor.  And it worked just fine when power was applied.  Thus the 36 is a self-motivator again.  Our heartiest thanks to those who made this possible, most notably Dan Fenlaciki!

When it comes time for sequencing, the contactor boxes face different ways, on different sides of the car, and one of them is in the middle, a little more challenging than the 309's arrangement.  But the same nursery rhyme works for them both.

And here we see Gerry, who got to be the controller twister this time.

Then I did the underbody inspection.  The traction motors were rebuilt in Cleveland by a motor shop, and they still look like new.  It's always nice to see something like that.  This car is our oldest operating interurban, and it should keep going for a long time.

After inspecting the trucks and motors, it was time to pull the car outside and do lubrication.  Frank had already done the armature bearings, so that just left the main bearings and axle caps, as I had already topped off the compressor.  And after a brief test run, it was put back in the barn.

The 1902 interior with its Bijou-style lighting and rattan seats is still in excellent shape.

And the "solarium" end of the car is usually a crowd pleaser.

Inspection is an intensive process, so I didn't get any pictures of what all the other guys were doing.  But if you stay tuned in on this channel, we'll try to catch up.

In any case, we're scheduled to be running a CA&E wood car train on Sunday, May 29th, and at least one crewman, preferably two, is still needed.  Sign up today, you'll be glad you did!

Quick visit

Frank writes...

Instead of my usual work trip out to the museum on Sunday, I dragged my wife and daughter out for a quick visit. While we were there, we stopped by Barn 4, where Joel and the other guys are making rapid progress on readying the 309 and 36 for operation next weekend.

On Saturday, they finished inspection work on the 309, so it's now ready to go. And today they were working on the 36. Joel was in the pit when I arrived, and by the end of the day he'd gotten the truck and motor work done.

But more excitingly, after I left, he and the crew got the pump reinstalled on the car! So that's real progress on this seven-month project.

It still needs the air and electrical connections made up, but the 36 was left on the pit so that this work can be done during the week, along with the remaining inspection tasks. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who worked on the "blue cars" this weekend!

Joel also pointed out that the axle caps for the newly rebuilt motors for the 1754 are in primer. I'm not sure what exactly remains to be done on this project, but the prospect of getting the 1754 put onto the correct motor truck with rebuilt motors draws ever closer.

LATE ADDITION: Bill Wulfert has sent along this photo of new waste bundles he made up for the 1754's axle caps. He also reports that Zach and Mikey were the ones who cleaned up the axle caps themselves to ready them for painting.

As for the family, we took a look at the nice new gallery space, then swung through Barn 7 to take a look at my current project.

Then it was on to Depot Street for a ride on the "Matchbox" (thanks to Zach, who was working as conductor, for the above photo) and of course some time on the playground. On our way out of town, we stopped by the bus barn (keep an eye out for yet another Scalzo history article later this week) where Richard and Jerry, helped by Good Nick and Greg, were working on moving a few of the non-operable buses to a nice new indoor storage location.

Perhaps Richard can chime in with some details on what's going on with CTA 9799. All I can tell you is that some of our buses are truly forked.