Loose Ends

 Let's not leave any loose ends lying about, we might regret it.  See, I always try to provide useful advice that will improve your life.  And at no charge -- what more could one ask?

In this case, I had noticed that one end post on the 36 was loose at the bottom, and it was noticeable when one pulls on the attached hand rail to get up into the car.  Last time, I had drilled a hole and started to insert a large lag screw to hold the post in place, but I needed to drill the hole out a little more.  So I started out by doing that.  It's fortunate we had a 12" lag screw of the right type for this purpose; it's lying on the end of the car in the picture.  The pipe clamp pulls the corner post into position while drilling and inserting the screw, which goes straight up through the floor..

Most of the rest of the day was taken up with surface prep and painting, as usual.  The first two sectors of lower siding on the aisle side were stripped and sanded, and then painted with a first coat of brown primer.

Now that's what I call real, tangible progress, progress that provides hope for the future - getting rid of green and replacing it with brown. I'm running on an anti-green platform.  Or at least standing on it.  My platform is too small for running.  In any case, my name is Randall Hicks, and I approved this message.  Such as it is. 

Then I put a first coat of finish blue on the #2 end, and black on the tack molding.  Sorry, I'm afraid a lot of posts are going to look like this, stripping and repainting a little at a time.  But that's the way things get done. 

 Let's see what Tim is up to.  All of the roof hardware has been removed, and he's hard at work making replacement wood pieces where the originals were rotted out.  Other sections have been filled with epoxy.  As usual, he's making progress at a remarkable rate.

And while we're up here, to the left our little open car is patiently waiting for next summer.

Visit to St. Louis

 Over the weekend we went to St. Louis to visit various friends and relatives, including David and Katy.  Mostly we toured Forest Park and visited the art museum, the history museum, the zoo, and so forth. 

In front of the history museum is this car from Milan, Italy, on display to promote the Loop Trolley project.  Whether this will ever actually get built is anybody's guess, but the car itself needs some repair.  The canvas is pulling out around the edges.  And notice that the windows have no frames; they're just pieces of Plexiglass or something with the latches fastened to them.  The loop will run from this location through the streets to a place near the University, where a similar car is also on display.

1. In other news, Randy Anderson sent me a few more pictures from Cleveland.  It sure would be classy if the 36 still had these nice drapes in the windows.  I wonder what happened to them?

Car 36 at Cleveland

Randy Anderson sent me a number of photos of car 36 soon after it arrived at Cleveland, and was being overhauled at the Cleveland RTA's main shop.  These pictures were taken by Dan Collins, who was a line supervisor for the RTA at that time, and is since retired.  The date is June 11, 2003, about a month before it was put into service for a day or two on the RTA.

The man on the left in this picture is our old friend Tim O'Donnell, whom I met when he was working for Gerry Brookins back in the 70's.  The others I wouldn't know.

And one can only guess what these guys had to say when they started looking into this 101-year old technology, after maintaining modern equipment for a living.

The shop at Cleveland seems to have slightly better facilities than we do in Barn 4.  In the photo at the top, notice the nice elevators that lift a truck straight up, with or without a car on it, and the turntables for easily moving trucks from one track to another.  Your tax dollars at work, I guess.

Here Tim seems to be lubricating the axle cap bearing surfaces by hand.  The personal touch always helps, I believe.

Here are a couple of views of the motor truck and the body bolster, with the kingpin.  This is definitely the original motor truck, the same one which is now under the car.

What's At Door #2?

Of course the scaffold is still in the way, but the #2 end now has a first coat of finish blue on the plate, and first finish red on all of the trim around the windows and door.

And the green paint is slowly being eaten away by the malevolent combination of heat and pressure.  In another few months this paint scheme will be history.  But it won't soon be forgotten, for there are only about 1,000,001 pictures of this car at North Olmsted floating around.  They used to park it out on the display track quite often.  And for that matter, I'll soon be posting some pictures of it you probably haven't seen before.

Well, thanks for stopping by.... Say, did I ever mention that IRM never closes for the winter?  Sure, we're no longer open for visitors, but volunteers are working throughout the year, unless the roads are completely impassable.  We have a large heated shop so you can work in comfort, no matter how cold it might be, and there are always lots of projects to work on.  I have plenty of windows that need to be repainted, for instance. If you're a member, you're welcome to come on out and do something productive.  See you soon!

Blast from the Past

 This is the 309 Team in 1978.  We're in the smoker of the 321, which served as our workroom.  If I remember correctly, we were working on a project to keep birds from building nests in the ventilators by soldering on some copper wire screen that we had gotten at Tugboat's.  Behind Bob is the case for a lightning arrestor, and which was then used as another storage bin.

Below, the cars are at the southeast corner of Barn 4; the 321 was located where the 306 is now, and the 309 was where the 810 is.  Behind us is part of the scaffolding for working on the roof of the 309.  Our friend Steve Hyett recently dug up these slides and allowed me to borrow them.  Thanks, Steve!  Ah, I remember those times as if it were only yesterday.

Note: These images are copyright by the photographer, Steve Hyett, and may not be copied, reproduced, edited, or modified for purposes of blackmail, ridicule, or other malicious trickery.

Roof Rush

Monday was Columbus Day, so no classes.  And thus another day of sanding and painting on the 36, including some paint stripping on the one remaining side of the car.

But a more interesting project, I must admit, is that Tim Peters has started replacing the roof on the 4412.  The car's present roof dates back to CTA days, and has always been questioable.  It was switched into Barn 4 on Saturday, replacing the 1797, and on Monday Tim started removing the old canvas and all of the tack molding.  Frank Sirinek and Fred Zimmerman were helping remove and dispose of all the material.  They also visited the 36 while taking a brief break.

 Roof jobs always seem to take longer than you expect.  But Tim is hoping to get this job done by Thanksgiving, so he can then start on the 1024.  If anyone could possibly do a complete roof job in that time, it's him.  Here he is on the platform, applying epoxy to solidify the underlying roof structure.

To be sure, there are quicker and easier ways of putting a new roof on a 4000.  I doubt this is what Tim has in mind.  It's an idea, though.

36 Progress

 On Friday evening I was a trainman on the Screamliner, as promised.  Things went smoothly and we had a reasonably good crowd for the first day of the event.  The other crewmen were Joel, Mike McCraren, and Mike Stauber, with Jamie and Roger on the engine.  It was quite cold, but there are heaters in the Birmingham at least.  And Phil provides hot drinks and snacks for the crew and the kids, which is greatly appreciated.  We can always use more help, so sign up if you can.  It's an interesting contrast with our usual operations.  Of course, they don't want us taking unauthorized pictures of the interior or the actors, so you will just have to see it for yourself.

Saturday was another work day on the 36.  Stripping paint (L), sanding, filling, more sanding, and finally a first coat of white primer on the areas that will be red, on the #2 end of the car (R).

 The next step will be to remove the motorman's front window at this end so it can be repainted.  On this side, there are several pipes, wires, and other odds and ends in the way, so getting it out will be more difficult.  It may not be obvious, but part of the windowsill is missing, so it will have to be replaced.

And on the right, look at this.  Underneath one of the molding pieces are these two wires twisted together and held in place with insulated staples.  These were part of the 600V lighting system and carried current to the dash light, which was later removed.  So luckily they're no longer part of the system.

I am hoping I will not have to disconnect the brake valve to remove the window; as that often results in air leaks.

And visitors from far away included Scott Davis from the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, and my long-time friends Randy and Betty Anderson, who now live in North Carolina.  It's always nice to show off what we've been doing!

Titan Missile Museum

David writes....

Also, on my recent trip to Arizona, I managed to visited the Titan Missile Museum.  The museum consists of a missile silo and control room of a deactivated Titan II missile site.  

At one time, the U.S. Air Force had 54 of these in the United States, each missile with a single nuclear warhead.  During the height of the Cold War, the silo was staffed by a crew of four, working 24 hour shifts (called "alerts), 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This particular missile silo was taken out of commission in 1981, and turned into a museum.  Let's take a tour, shall we.  

To enter the control room, one must descent 55 stairs, and then encounter the first of several blast doors.  These large doors weigh several tons each, but swing easily and freely on the hinges.  When closed, both the silo and control room were protected from the shockwaves of a nearby nuclear blast.  

Here, we see the control room.  As you can see in the background, the entire structure is mounted on large coil springs, which allow the control room to move several feet in any direction, to enable the facility to survive a nuclear blast.  We also see the safe, where the launch codes were kept.  During this portion of the tour, we saw a simulated launch sequence, which included the simultaneous turning of two keys, located seven feet apart.  It was eerie to realize that World War III would been fought largely by people pushing buttons and turning keys.  

The next part of the tour consisted of walking down a hallway, also mounted on shock absorbers.  

Finally, we managed to see the Titan II missile and warhead.  This particular one was used as a training missile in Texas before being placed here in place of the in-service missile.  On the top we see the simulated warhead. The staff frowned when I attempted to ride it like Slim Pickens.

Overall, I was impressed at the level of preservation of the facility.  It was clean, and appeared to have just been taken out of service, despite being a museum for nearly 25 years.  

What Terror Lurks Within???

 

 I'm afraid to go in it myself, at least if I'm alone, this ancient Pullman car from a circus train said to be haunted by the ghosts of malevolent clowns. And  to get there,

you have to detour through this boxcar, and pass through the rest of the Train of Terror. 

Meanwhile, the Screamliner is sitting on Station 2, waiting to transport you to destinations not shown on any timetable.  I would seriously advise you not to try this by yourself -- bring several friends.  You'll be glad you did!

I'll be a trainman on the Screamliner tomorrow night, so I hope to see some of you there.  Unless you lose your nerve....

It was a beautiful fall day, and here's a view of Schneider's Grove.  The trees are turning earlier than usual, due to the drought I suppose, and we're getting more color than usual here on the property.

I applied a first coat of finish blue to the #1 end of the 36, so it now looks like this.  It's essentially done until I start on the final painting sometime next year. The doors and end windows all need to be taken to the shop to be stripped and repainted, but for now, at least on the ends, they're not too bad.

Soon I can start removing the last of the ugly dark green.  This is almost exactly the same color the 321 had been painted in, and which I spent a lot of time removing over the years.  I'll be glad to see it go.  I spent most of the rest of the day stripping paint and sanding on the #2 end, and painted one side of it with white primer.

Here we can view the 308 as seen through the end gates on the 1024.

As usual, Tim was hard at work on the 1797, finishing up the remaining parts of the interior.  Here he is painting the ceiling of the vestibule.

Unloading the 504 - Updated

 I just bought a new slide scanner and wanted to try it out.  These particular slides are not very good technically, but I thought the subject matter might be of interest.

This is Fort Wayne and Wabash Valley car 504, the parlor car Talisman.  After that line was abandoned, the body became a house in Indiana.  Norm Krentel discovered it, and it was purchased and moved to IRM in 1993.  Here we see it after it was unloaded from the trailer onto cribbing in the newly-constructed Barn 7. When you compare this forlorn wreck to the car's present appearance, it's hard to believe.  Glenn Guerra certainly did an outstanding job in rebuilding this car!

And here we are jacking the car up by hand, so it can be lowered onto shop trucks.

Hey, you!  Stop grinning for the camera, and work harder!

Update:  And here, from the next box, are some pictures of the same car taken just four years later, in July 1997.