Diesel Days

This may be about the shortest report on a major festival at IRM that you'll see.  But I was busy -- that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Summary: Diesels were everywhere.

There were lots of visitors, lots of action, lots of photography, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

The one display I actually visited was this Burlington switcher parked at 50th Ave. with the cab open for visitors, and the doors open to show some of the mechanical features inside.  And the crew were standing by to answer questions.  This is quite good.

And over on the next track:

Luckily for you, if you missed it today (Saturday), it will still be going tomorrow!

And finally, the new ballast in Barn 4 looks quite nice.  Now all you have to do is wet all this dry plaster with a fine mist from a spray bottle, and you'll have an authentic-looking roadbed.

309 Bearing News -- At Last!

It's been four years since we last reported on the effort to produce new motor bearings for the 309.  And in case you don't remember that far back:

The problem is as follows: on the #1 truck, the axles were turned down by the railroad in the areas where the motor bearings ride.  As a result, the bearings are very loose -- as you can see here:

There's about a 1/2" gap between the axle and the lower bearing surface.  This allows the motor to jump up and down depending on which direction you're traveling and whether the motor is powering the car.  So new, thicker bearings are needed.  We have plenty of badly worn ones in stock, but nothing that would help this situation.  We had a rough casting produced by a foundry in Chicago, and the two halves were soldered together in preparation for machining, back in 2019, but then the project ground to a halt.  Until now. 

I decided to make this a priority, and repossessed the casting.  Within a week I had located a machine shop that could do the work, and in another week the machining was finished to my satisfaction.  I should have taken a picture of the rough casting, but didn't.  Anyway, the finished product was beautiful.  Here it is on my bench at home.  Of course, the two halves are still soldered together, but it's almost impossible to see the joint.

The oval gap in the bottom piece is for lubrication of the axle by the cotton waste bundles in the motor cap.

On Thursday morning I brought it to the Museum.  The first thing that still needed to be done was to drill the holes for the alignment pins that keep the bearing from rotating relative to the motor, and I wanted to double-check the alignment.  You need a big drill press for this job.

Next, let's squeeze ourselves under the car to see if we can remove the old bearings.  The first thing to do is to unbolt the motor cap and slide it out of the way, on a platform made for the purpose.  The motor itself is jacked up slightly with an old auto jack so that it isn't resting on the bearings any more.  And you can now see the old bearings still on the axle:

First, I remove the bottom half and set it on the shelf.  The upper half has now slid down around the axle and is underneath it.  That's excellent, since I was afraid it might be hard to remove.

The upper half is slippery and there's nothing to hold onto, but eventually it can be lifted off the axle and set on the shelf.  Now we see the bare axle behind it.  It has no visible flaws.

For safety, I insert some wood so the motor can't drop onto the axle if the jack gives way somehow.

Now it's time to unsolder the new casting.  First, I use a spare GE 66 motor cap to check that the holes were indeed drilled in the right spot.  It fits nice and tight.

Then the casting was placed in the big oven, the temperature was set for 550F, and we wait for the temperature to slowly climb to the setpoint.  After a couple of hours, the casting separates into two halves, and we wait another couple of hours for the parts to cool down. 

 Then they're taken home for cleaning up the solder joints and the newly-drilled holes.

Meanwhile, lots of things were going on, and among them was dumping more gravel in Barn 4 so the new floors can be poured.  Most of the weekday guys were helping with this arduous task.  I didn't want to be too far from the big oven while it was heating up, but after it was turned off and started to cool down, it was safe to venture out and help a little with shoveling.  But the other guys did most of the work.

The tie crane (above) pushed a dump cart back and forth: outside to have the bins loaded by a big front loader, then inside the barn so it could be dumped by hand and leveled.   And as you can see, the route leads right over the pit.

It's hard work, but that's the price we pay for progress.

Traction Badges

Recently one of our readers found what he believes to be an electric railway badge at an antique store in Minnesota, but he can't identify it.  It has just a number on the front, and an indecipherable word engraved on the back.  Can anyone help?  Given the location, I suppose it might be TCRT but it could be almost anything.  Our experts on the Chicago L haven't seen anything quite like this.

But while we're on the subject, here are some interesting badges from private collections that are easier to identify.  We usually think of the word "porter" in connection with Pullman, but CRT had porters whose job it was to keep the stations swept and clean.  

And they also had station watchmen:

Finally, here's a celluloid motorman's hat badge from the NW Elevated, a predecessor of CRT:

It is unusual because it has a pin back.  Heeren Bros. mostly made celluloid badges that attached to hats via posts.

And if you're thinking of tossing in the quote from Sierra Madre, I got there first.  So don't bother.

Building Prep and Grounds Grading

Many thanks to Bill Wulfert, who ventured into the distant lands over the horizon known as the "south end" to bring us photos of the earthmoving and grading work being done there.

I believe these first two images, showing the lighter-colored pad immediately adjacent to the berm, show the future location of our bus storage building. If I'm correct, this is to be located directly east of the current storage building at the far southwest corner of the property.

Large quantities of earth are being moved.

And I believe these last two images show the site of future Yard 16, which is located directly south of the existing Car Line Extension track, currently filled with freight cars. If you look at Google aerial photos of the property, the Car Line Extension is pretty obvious because it's a lone piece of track; north of it is Yard 15 and this will be just south of the extension. And then, of course, at some point in the future, the extension itself will be extended along the east side of Olson Road and north to the Main Street scene. But that's a few years off.

Trolley Bus Painting Progress

Thanks to Richard Schauer for an update of a sudden flurry of activity on our Milwaukee trolley bus, 441, which is off-site at a contractor's shop for exterior restoration and painting.

I visited the shop on July 26th, and they had completed sanding and leveling on the entire lower section of the bus, except the front end.  The foreman told me that the guys looked over the top section and determined it would take comparatively little work, and they wanted to do a "test prime" on the lower section.  You may recall that they did this same thing on the 9631, to find any areas that needed more work.  The uniform gray color brings out imperfections in the finish that the varying paint colors can hide.  They had masked the top section, and planned to prime the next morning after all of the dust in the shop had a chance to settle.  The first four photos show it on that day.

Sure enough, when I returned on August 2, the test prime was completed and various imperfections were sanded out.  In addition, they had fitted a new piece of metal to the front end, but had not yet welded it to blend it into the surrounding sheet.

Now that it seems that 441 has gotten on the right track, I'll keep the updates coming along as the news happens.

Serendipity

Here's another unusual find from the Brookins collection.  It's a piping and wiring diagram from the North Shore.  The car type is not specified, but it has treadle controls and door engines and so on, so it's obviously not an interurban car:

And it's dated 1927, so I suspect it's for the 354 series cars.  And the CA&E presumably needed it for their car 500, which was nearly identical.  So this might be quite useful.

An Excellent Vintage

Today was another excellent Vintage Transport Extravaganza.  The weather was nearly perfect and we had a good crowd of visitors; just about everybody seemed to be having a great time.  Most of the time I was too busy to take many pictures, so we don't have anything of the 1630 pulling the coach train or the 411 powering the bilevels.  The bilevels, of course, really look sharp when they have the correct locomotive on the front.

But here's our three-car train of wood CA&E equipment.

And the crew consisted of me, Frank, and a relatively new member, Rene Ruano.  We ran seven trips and most of them did require three cars.  Things went smoothly and a good time was had by all.

A couple of pictures showing only a small part of the vast array of vehicles.

Finally, I thought this looked like an amusement park ride:

So, as usual, the moral of this story is that if you weren't there in person, you missed a lot and will just have to wait until next year.  Don't let it happen again!

Frank adds...

I snapped a few photos on Sunday, but most were after the end of service.

I did manage to grab this shot of the 309 and the bi-level train in the background. Just like Wheaton!

I don't think we've posted any full portraits of the 306 since it was painted and lettered a few weeks ago. It sure is a beauty!

Speaking of the 306, a metalworking shop built a replacement line switch box since the original was pretty badly deteriorated. Pretty nice work, I must say.

And here's Doodlebug Bob at the lathe, working on a new armature for one of the DB-160 contactors for Illinois Terminal 1565. The Type M system is extremely robust, but it's not impossible for things to wear out, and on the 1565 we've found that some of the magnetic coils have stopped working properly because of worn electromagnet armatures. So, Bob is manufacturing new Type M parts. As you do.

As a final mention, many thanks to everyone who made the event run so smoothly! The weather was outstanding and the railroad ran like clockwork, due to dispatcher Dan Buck along with help from the train crews. All four service trains made their first trips between 10:00 and 10:45 and ran every 15 minutes until after 4:00; I think there were 27 mainline trips, all of them full trips to the Grove, which is pretty impressive.