A Friendly Visit

Today was most notable because we had a visit with friends of ours from the Northern Ohio Railway Museum.  We've been cooperating with them on several projects, and traded parts, information, documents, rumors, innuendo, and we all had a great time.  We'll probably have more information about some of this later.  Meanwhile, we have a few pictures of various things around the property.

Before the visitors arrived, I had time to install the trap flap with the new hinge on the 309.  Again, my thanks to the car shop experts who fixed it.  It looks a lot better now.

I also worked on door closers for the 319, but nothing to take a picture of.

It's not often you get to see Gregg Wolfersheim in action!

One of the things our Ohio friends brought us was a set of special seats for the Baldy.  The Baldies were built with center doors that were never actually used, and in front of the doors were folding seats.  Here Bill is setting them up.

And they would look like this, with the door behind them.  So this is a very valuable contribution to one of our ongoing restoration projects.

And then we gave them a set of recently-cast brake shoes for their Cleveland center-entrance car.  Here they are staged on the grass while we load them carefully into the automobile.  Can you spell "heavy"?

Frank will be able to tell you more about the brake shoes.

The Ohio guys were particularly interested in the 306, since they have Fox River car 303, which they will naturally be restoring in its Shaker Heights configuration.

John and the others continue to make good progress on the car.

And here they are discussing all the fine points of the restoration.

The contractors continue to make good progress on the Barn 4 extension.  Today they were installing the gutters and drain pipes, among other things.

And a lot of other things were going on around the property, in particular, moving trees.  No, I'm serious.  Maybe next time we'll have more news about trees!

Thomas Day 2

Frank writes...

It's not exactly breaking news, but Sunday was the second day of Thomas for 2023. It was another successful day with big crowds - bigger than last year, it seemed - and things seemed to run quite smoothly. The most unusual thing about the day was likely the haziness, which I think was due to more wildfire smoke drifting down from up north.

I was running the 144, which is always fun, with Randy Allegrezza as my conductor. It was pretty nonstop all day; for the first hour or two we had the normal four cars in rotation, but the Matchbox got put away so that its crew could give the other three crews lunch breaks since we were understaffed on the "relief crew" side. I snapped a couple of photos during my lunch break, including this shot of Jeff running the 144.

It's always good to see crowds like this at the museum!

And to complement the "little blue engine" on one end of the train was the "big blue engine," Rock Island 4506, which of course is quite a showpiece since its paint job a few years ago.

Long Live Thomas!

Today was the first Day Out With Thomas this year, and everything was a huge success, it seemed.  We had a large crowd of people, and everyone I dealt with was having a great time.  What more could you want?  

I was on streetcar relief, and I had a blast.  I got to operate three different streetcars, and conducted on two of them.  

Photo by Roger Kramer

Of course, my old buddy Roger never misses a beat.  He was out in front of Barn 3 selling his fund-raiser cookies, as always.

Before the real work started, though, and the regular crews needed relief, I had some time to do some small but important Car Dept. tasks.  I rigged up a replacement whistle cord for the 36 and installed it.

And then I marked the trap flap from the 309 that the shop guys had repaired, so it could be taken home and drilled.  They did a great job, and I really appreciate it.

\For the rest of these pictures, you can probably fill in the captions for yourself.

There's no place quite like IRM.

So if you can, be there tomorrow!

Trolley Bus 441 Update

It's been a while since we've had an update on our Milwaukee Marmon-Herrington trolley bus, 441, which is off-site for professional exterior restoration and painting. This is because the body shop has been unusually busy, so a less urgent project like ours gets delayed. But work has resumed, and Richard Schauer has sent along the latest news.

Work continues at a more normal speed on 441, with the curb side now nearing completion of the sanding and leveling step.  The picture which just shows the side was taken on Thursday the 6th, and the picture showing the entire side and part of the front was taken a week later on the 13th.  No unexpected problems were found; in fact the body on this side was in excellent condition.

The remaining steps include metal replacement and sanding/leveling on the front, welding, straightening, and re-chroming the front bumper, test priming and filling any remaining problem spots, final priming, and painting.  For the lettering, masks will be used to "letter under" the paint, so that will be done at the body shop instead of at IRM after it is returned.  (9631 was "lettered over," so I took care of that at IRM.  We replicate whatever the transit company did, in both cases.)

Remember, we can do more of these relatively turn-key bus/trolley bus restorations by contracting the work out to the body shop - just pick your favorite bus and have your checkbook ready!

Westbound Over the Creek

Thanks to Dave Zeman, who snapped this photo a couple of weeks ago during the evening Traction Photo Shoot. The four-car wood train was spotted here for photographers but did not go any further east than this (though of course the train made it to Johnson Siding the previous day during the pageant). What a sight!

Hot News

Flash: it was hot yesterday, in the middle of July.  Not too surprising, of course, but that limits to some extent how much gets done.  Maybe the next barn we build will be air-conditioned as well as heated.  You can always dream.

I had a list of small repair projects on the CA&E wood cars that I wanted to work on.  The first was removing the leaking whistle valve on the 308.  In order to remove the valve, you have to remove the whistle, then the piping below it.  However, our brass trombone whistles are epoxied in place so they can't be stolen, so that's a little more challenging.  I need to heat up the whistle with a propane torch to break the epoxy, and that requires a heat shield so I don't burn paint off the car.  It's been many years since I last did this, so I started by making a new heat shield, and this time I'll try to keep track of it.  Anyway, the whistle was removed without difficulty.

And the valve was placed on the workbench for the mechanical wizards to either repair or replace.

And better yet, while I was busy, some nice fellows came along and installed a tent right behind Barn 8 for me to relax in when I'm not working.  Very conveniently located.  I guess it pays to have seniority.

I also worked for a while on adjusting the door closers for the interior doors on the 319.  These things are hard to adjust, and I'm not sure I understand how they work, but I think it's an improvement.  Not much to take a picture of, though.

And I also received the parts I need for the next two little projects: rope for the whistle on the 36, and the hinged flap for one of the traps on the 309.  Thanks to the shop guys for all their help on this!

In other news, the ceiling is complete in the barn extension.  And the contractors were working on the north side of the barn, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

Tim has nailed down all of the canvas on the 1808:

and he spent all day installing the flashing over the clerestory canvas.

Jim is seen here painting one of the trucks on the 306:

John was also working on the 306, and Gregg was working on the 1702.

Finally, work actually started on the Jewell Road station shelter.  First, some "before" pictures to document the condition of the structure before work starts.

And then, I started putting in more nails to help hold the exterior siding in place, and scraping loose paint wherever possible.  I must admit, after all that scraping it doesn't look very different in this picture, but after some spot priming and so on we may start to see a difference.  And in any case I need the exercise.

But the next two weekends will be all Thomas, all the time, so don't miss it!

Scrub, Scrub

Frank writes...

Following the successful 70 for 70 Trolley Pageant last weekend, it's time to start working on the voluminous list we've been creating for things to do after the pageant! Shaker Heights 18 has plenty of work left to do, of course.

I started out by doing some Bondo and sanding work on the outside, though there isn't much of this left to do. Then it was time for a switch move. The 18 badly needs its roof repainted, and the first step is to wash off the years of dust and dirt that have accumulated. Above, you can see the 1374 and 4391 after they were moved to allow the 18 to emerge from its current home on track 73.

Thanks to Good Nick for this photo of yours truly washing off the roof with a sprayer and broom used as a scrub brush. Quite a bit of visible dirt was cascading down the side of the car during this operation! The car was moved to a spot on the streetcar line alongside Yard 2, at which point Nick turned off the 600V trolley power and locked and grounded it out so that I could work safely on the roof. Thanks to Nick and Joel for all their help with this!

The roof doesn't look all that different yet, just a bit less dusty, but I promise that once it's painted the results will be noticeable.

In other news, Zach, Nick, Greg, and a new volunteer named Zeke were working on air parts for the 749 while another new volunteer named Drew worked on repainting steps. I snapped a photo of the 1808 with its newly tacked roof canvas - Tim is making his usual rapid progress on this car. Bob and Mikey were also working on contactors for the 1565 while Gregg was laboring up on the roof of the 1702 and Joel was working on various necessary things.

Finally, an appeal for help: anyone have experience with rebuilding Eclipse fenders and similar designs? We'd like to hang one on the 18; technically it's correct with or without a fender during the "Bankers Grey" era, but it will look a lot more interesting with one. We have a fender in generally good condition but it needs new transverse pipes across the top and bottom of the "cushion" (yellow in the diagram below) and we also need to replace one front corner bracket (red in the diagram below - the other one is shown above). This is the only car at IRM that's supposed to have a fender of this type so we don't have any experience working with these things. Any advice is appreciated.