New old identity

Frank writes...

My father is out of town and our family pretty much celebrated Fathers Day on Saturday. I brought my daughter out to IRM and we went for a streetcar ride and saw some of the displays, plus a visit to the Bellock Playground. That was fun but I didn't get much in the way of photos. On Sunday, I was able to come out to IRM for a longer-than-usual work day.

As I was driving on to the property, I encountered Zach running the 144. It's always nice to see this car in service.

I also ambled up to the depot, where Good Nick was running a two-car set of spam cans. This isn't unusual, but what was different was that rather than the usual lash-up of 22 and 41, this time it was 30 and 41, with the former car on the east end. It wasn't running using the bow trolleys - it was running off a jumper from the 41, like car 22 typically does - but even so it was very eye-catching. And this was one of the first times it's been in service since the bow trolleys were installed, I think. I also checked out the new bacon reefer but some of our regular contributors have promised to send photos so we'll wait on that.

As usual, I focused on the 18. I spent a while working on prepping the left (blind) side of the car for fresh grey paint. Here it is "before."

Over the front truck, you could still see the outline of the old Trolleyville herald that was applied to the car for a time in the 1960s/1970s. During that period, Brookins was lettering cars for the made-up "home road" Columbia Park & Southwestern. The CP&SW had its own herald which advertised it as the "Mobile Home Route" and had an image of a Conestoga wagon. This was applied to a number of cars but was removed from most of them after a few years, from what I can gather.

I didn't sweep the sanding dust off the side of the car before taking this picture, but here you can again see evidence of the car's previous SHRT number underneath its Trolleyville number.

I got almost half of the left side of the car sanded, but there's a section of the drop section with some rust jacking that I'd like to try and drive out with a needle chipper, so that's where I stopped until we can bring the car over to the pit where compressed air is handy. After this I also wire-wheeled some places where rust was coming through the paint and Bondo-ed a few spots with small rust holes. After sanding down the Bondo I'll be able to spot-prime and then paint this portion of the side of the car.

Another forward step was putting a coat of gloss white paint on the ceiling panels pictured last time. But photographically they don't look any different than they did last week, so I didn't bother. The next step with those will be to lay out where the holes for the light fixture and ventilators will go.

A band of rain came through (nothing like what passed through the area around 11pm though) so I took the opportunity to cut out the stencil I'd made up a couple of weeks ago. When the rain passed, it was time to head over to the 18 and change its identity.

This was gratifying. The car hasn't been the 18 since about 1961, give or take. Of course right now it's got a real split personality: of six car numbers on the thing, two say 18, two say 1218, and two are currently obliterated. But all of that will be fixed in time. Many thanks to Zach for the action shot of me "signwriting."

Hey, you! You like electric cars, right? Well, have we got an offer for you. If you come out to visit IRM on Trolley Weekend - preferably on Saturday the 3rd, when the CA&E wood cars are scheduled to run (hint: come early!) - you'll be able to run the 1630 for just $10! ...well no, not that 1630 of course. We're talking about Metra 1630, which happens to be the largest electric MU car we run by far. You'll be able to run a pair of Highliners for only $10. Such a deal! Mark your calendar now and don't miss it.

Sunday evening update

Frank writes...

I didn't make it out to IRM until late afternoon Sunday, so I didn't have too much time. But I tried to make the most of it.

Really all I worked on was a project involving ceiling panels for the 18, so I'm afraid this will not be the most fascinating blog post. Sorry. The Electroliner project had procured several 4'x8' pieces of thin plywood to use as a base for spray-painting baggage racks atop the spare traction motors out in Barn 4. With that painting done, they agreed to donate the plywood to the 18 project. THANK YOU to Ed, Gerry, and the other 'Liner guys! So after measuring the needed dimensions with some much-needed assistance from Richard, I began cutting these panels to the correct width as shown above. These will be used as a temporary (read as: for the next few years) replacement for the one missing ceiling panel in the 18. The original panel was about 5'6"x9'6" so I need three of these sheets, grain running perpendicular to the car, to fill the hole.

Thanks to Richard and Zach (shown) as well as Nick D (not shown) for helping to strain out the rather chunky white primer I had and paint the first panel. Unfortunately I ran out of primer in short order. So thanks also go to Joel for procuring some quick-drying white primer I was able to use to paint the other two panels.

Voila. I need to buy some more white primer for general use, and some white finish paint to apply to these three panels. Then it will be time to fit them (they'll need a few holes for things like light fixtures and ventilators) and install them. At some point in the future, when lumber is cheaper and there's more money in the 18's fund, I'll procure some 6'x10' sheets of plywood as permanent ceiling panels.

When I arrived, the crew was just finishing up switching the 'Liner back over to Barn 7 following another stint on the inspection pit. Doodlebug Bob was also working on the milling machine, building a jig (fixture?) for machining North Shore car journal bearing wedges.

When it was time for dinner, there was a political demonstration that blocked traffic on the road past the car shop, protesting the electoral loss at the Annual Meeting of one of our favorite local politicians. Fortunately the protestor got hungry and headed to dinner before things got out of hand.

Saturday update

Bill Wulfert was out at IRM on Saturday the 12th and sent in some news updates. Thanks, Bill!

All photos by Bill Wulfert.

The west end of Met car 2872 is still very much in the initial "demo" stage. Here Tim goes at the car with a cutting torch, apparently.

One exciting bit of news is that the two WH 567 motors that we sent out to get rebuilt have returned from the motor shop, looking as good as new. These motors will go into the Baldwin MCB motor truck now undergoing major overhaul in the "lean-three" portion of the electric car shop and will then go under 'L' car 1754. The 1754 is currently operational but it's got the wrong type of motor truck, and the wrong type of motors, under it, so this will rectify that situation.

Beautiful!

The "second shift" mechanical team was working on the Electroliner over the weekend. Here, the east end of the train is jacked up to insert some shims in the center bearings. Other truck work that is being worked on includes some adjustment of the coil springs and installation of correct-type brake hoses to the trucks.

Monday Manifest

 Monday saw most of the regular weekday workers in Barn 4 again, and we managed to get quite a bit done.

With some help from John Sheldon, I removed all of the screws holding one baggage rack in place, and we were able to get it down with damaging anything.  These things are long and very heavy.  I finally gave up on trying to get it out the east end of the car, and we carried it to the west end.

But with the baggage rack out of the way, the upper wall panels are easily accessible for stripping.

These are the "before" pictures, but I didn't get around to the "after" pictures.   Sorry.

During the day, I also painted the roof fuse box, installed it, and attached one of the cables.  The other cable needs its connector soldered back in place.

Speaking of baggage racks, the racks for the Electroliner were sent out for stripping to a place that does this sort of thing.  Much easier and more effective than trying to do it ourselves.  Here Pete and Ed are looking over the results, with satisfaction.  These baggage racks are in sections that are much smaller and lighter than the ones on the 453.  Just my luck.

Tim continues to remove parts from the 2872 to prepare it for restoration, but I didn't get any pictures today.

Finally, we have arrived at the point where the 306 is getting new paint.   John spent much of the day painting the lower parts of the north side with primer, and it looks great.  By the end of the day he had finished the entire side.

Finally, while it was too hot to work on the roof for very long, I found time to put some more canvas paint on the extra pieces for climbing, which needed it.

As usual, it won't be nearly so outlandish in natural light, after drying.

More fresh paint

Frank writes...

Sunday was a short day at IRM for me but I still got some noticeable work done. The primary goal was to paint the right side of the 18 from the belt rail down and aft of the doors.

Thanks to Zach for getting this photo of me in action with the trim roller.

Here's the final result. This side of the car, which conveniently is the side seen by the public walking through Barn 7, now wears fresh Bankers Grey paint for most of its length. I still need to do most of the rear end (you can see a bit of the recently-applied Bondo in this photo), the doors, the panel between the doors, and of course the letterboard and window posts. I also brought over the four most recently-painted windows. One of them was lightly wider than the others and I wasn't able to get it into the car, but it came out of the car (at a different slot) so I just need to fiddle with that. The other three got installed on the car's left side.

Speaking of Zach, this was his project for the day. The headlights on the 749 stopped working during night operations on Memorial Day Weekend, so the car's headlight resistor box was removed and brought into the shop. The fault was traced not to a resistor but to one of the wires, so that's good. We won't be so lucky when it comes time to repair the 319's headlight resistor box, which has a couple of resistors that failed. I should probably start working on that sooner rather than later...

Just a Typical Friday

... except YOU are there, thanks to the wonders of digital photography.  Today's subjects are the 453 (natch!) and the 2872 (likewise!).

I started by moving the roof cables more or less into place on the roof, and verified that indeed every wire will connect to whatever it's supposed to.  I also spent some time fastening down the trolley boards some more.  Not much to see there.

I then took the roof fuse box to the shop.  It's in pretty good shape as fuse boxes go, but the lower plate needed some patching with solid epoxy.  Here you can see it setting up, with clamps.

After a few hours, it was ready for primer.

One unusual thing about these cars is that the roof fuse box is connected to the cable between the bus jumpers, so it only functions when power is flowing through the bus line.  And we don't do that except as a last resort.  Still, we need to have the fuse box provide protection.

And since it got rather warm up on the roof, I spent some time on the interior.  The upper wall panels have loose paint which needs to be cleaned off by wire-wheeling.  Before:

And after:

This takes some effort, but it will be worth it.  All of our St. Louis 450's have similar problems with the interiors.  Wire-wheeling can be tiring, but I find it works best to do it for a few minutes, then find something else to do and come back later.

Actually, the 453 probably has the best interior of the three cars.  The ceiling in the main compartment is pretty good.  The upper wall panels on the north side are peeling badly:  

But on the south side it's OK.  I can only think that this must be due to storage outside, with one side facing south and the other north.  So the problems with the interiors might date back to the period from 1957-62, before the cars were acquired by Gerry Brookins.

I would think that the interior in the above picture would be acceptable for regular service, at least on a temporary basis.

On the other hand, the baggage racks are all pretty bad:

I'm thinking it will be best to remove the baggage racks, one or perhaps two at a time, and clean them up outside.  At the same time it will be easier to strip and repaint the upper wall panels.  I started loosening the machine screws that hold the first baggage rack in place, and it's certainly not impossible.

Meanwhile, work continued on the Met car, 2872.

Doug, who is usually part of the Barn 10 crew, came over to Barn 4 to needle-chip the exposed side sills on the Met car.  I can't tell you how grateful Tim was for this help.

Tim, however, is disassembling one end of the car.  You may guess at his general attitude:

Of course, if we had live recordings of his comments, the blog would be shut down by the censors.

And on the other hand, I suspect that if anyone other than Tim had started on this project, it would have been abandoned by now.

While the ends of the car are challenging, to say the least, the interior isn't too bad.

To follow this story to its exciting climax, you'll just have to tune in again.   And again.   And again.

Meanwhile, let's take a break and see what's happening out west where urban development is underway.  Luckily, I ran into my old friend Al Choutka who explained exactly what's planned.

Here I'm standing near the current west end of Central Avenue, looking due west.  At this point, the street will take an abrupt turn to the left.

Here I'm standing in about the same place, looking southwest.  You can see straight ahead where the street will go.  As for the street trackage, it will take an abrupt turn here.  I think they will put in a piece of curved track on each side, and then follow that with several straight sections in parallel, until they get closer to the edge of the table.

Here I'm standing alongside the west wall of the MPB, looking southwest.  The new North Western building will be rectangular, and set at an angle to the cardinal directions.  I think you can make out its footprint.  Running across the picture is a north-south "road" which will be removed.  Between the MPB and the North Western building will be a drainage ROW.   

We are open for regular operations all week now, of course.  Today the 749 was providing service.

 Well, that's all the exciting news we have for today.  But there will be more, we can assure you.