Painted Jewell

Before we get to Jewell Road, we'll look at some other current projects.  I'm working on trying to reproduce the finish on the insides of the 18's windows.  Here we start with a new bottom rail, which as you can see is poplar.

After staining it dark mahogany and dabbing black paint onto it, the rail looks more like the original finish on the stiles and top rail.  Among other things, I probably will try flat black next time.  Gloss black was all I had on hand.

And here's what the above window looks like when installed.  

I also replaced two of the remaining 318 windows with recently repainted ones.  We now have only one 318 window in the car, which I'll need to keep moving around as the originals get refinished one by one.  Here's the next one to be a guinea pig.

Meanwhile, Gerry continues work on the 306, installing electrical parts on the roof.  Holding onto the trolley wire to steady yourself is safer than it looks -- the wire inside the barn has been disconnected for a while.

And inside the 1808 cocoon, Tim continues to install light fixtures and molding strips.

And then, outside, blocking the street, Jeff, Gregg, and Tim were busy stringing lights on this locomotive.  That ought to make people happy!

Monday was unseasonably warm and sunny, so it was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to continue painting the Jewell Road shelter before winter sets in.  I finished scraping down the siding on the front (south) side and applied white primer.  Several boards need to be replaced, so it would be a waste of time to paint them.  I will also be replacing the door frame.  Otherwise, it looks pretty good.

I carefully measured the vertical spacing of the boards.  The spacing varies quite a bit, and in many cases the boards are not even parallel, but it comes out to usually between 7 1/2" and 8".  The 1x8 boards that are generally available nowadays are 7 1/4" wide, so I'll have to buy 1x10s and rip them.  Anyway, making new siding should be fun.

The paint cans tell you not to paint in direct sun, but follow the shade around the house.  That doesn't work on the south side, of course, but after lunch I put some more finish paint, both blue and red, on the east side of the shelter -- as high as I could reach.

And some blue on the right side of the front.

So for now, painting is complete on both the north and east sides of the building.  Some of the boards on the east side will also need to be replaced.

Weekend Report

Frank writes...

I had some IT issues (no, not that IT) over the weekend that prevented me from posting for a couple of days, so what might have been two or three posts is being compressed into one.

I was only out on Sunday, but fortunately our intrepid freelance photographer Steven sent along photos he took throughout the weekend (also fortunate because I completely forgot to take any photos of my own on Sunday). We'll start with Friday night, when he was out getting an early start on the weekend work.

First, an overview of some of the few remaining seats from Shaker Heights 18 remaining to be painted. The ones with a swoop up at the back are bench or nickel seat cushions. Steven got most of the pictured seats painted by the end of the night - thank you, Steven!!

Of course, the 415 is still the focus of a flurry of work. Here it is over in Barn 2 nearing readiness for paint.

Steven wire-wheeled trolley poles for the car. Before is above, after is below.

And then he helped Joel run cords to run some of the light strings that will be located all over the property for HHR. There is an enormous amount of largely unseen effort that goes into readying IRM for this event.

Then on Saturday, Steven and Joel worked on stripping parts off the old power routing box located outside the substation and began working on building the new replacement box. This is just an enclosure for the large switches on the outside of the substation that allow us to control what parts of the overhead network are receiving power from where, but as you can tell, the old box was life expired.

And that brings us to Sunday. I showed up mid-afternoon, a little later than usual, and with help from Good Nick, Greg, and Steven, we got all of the painted seats from the 18 that were in the "lean-three" brought over to the car. I still need to install them all, but just lugging them over there was a big help. Steven took a couple of photos. First, here's one of the seats with a repainted cushion and un-repainted seat back:

...followed by a view of the one seat whose back I have painted. Even with the car lights off, the difference is pretty clear. Once these are all done, it will really make the interior of the car look a lot better.

I also removed the last few bench seat backs from the car and brought them into the shop. We're down to just six or eight "pieces" remaining that can be painted in the shop, and once those are all done, only the cross-seat backs - which would be too difficult to remove, and will need to be painted in place - will remain to be done.

After dinner, I helped Nick a bit with some DA sanding on the 415 to smooth down areas where wood putty had been applied. Even on a steel car like the 415, there's still a lot of wood, notably the windows, doors, and corner posts. Meanwhile, Steven was over in Barn 4, sand-blasting the 415's tow bar pins:

During the day, Bus Department Steven had wire-wheeled about one and a half of the 415's retrievers, so Sunday night Steven finished wire-wheeling the remaining retriever. This is an Earll, if you were wondering.

Of course, as always, there were other things going on Sunday. Zach was working on one of the North Shore cars, Joel was putting up strings of lights, and Nathan was fighting the latest battle in the ongoing war with the small forklift.

Meanwhile, Brian, Bob, and Mikey spent the weekend working on machining more pins for the contactors in the Class B. Brian reported that they completed 10 contactor rebuilds this weekend. Below, he shows off one of the contactors with its new pins, followed by a shot of the pile of shavings that was left over and then a cool shot Steven took of the bank of contactors inside the locomotive. IRM certainly has the most Type M-equipped cars in regular operation of any museum, I'd say, and we can now boast that we have what must be one of the more accomplished Type M contactor rebuilding endeavors among the museum community.

And finally, Steven and Jimmy got the heat on the Green Hornet prepped for Happy Holiday Railway. The primary heating system on the car is the "heat dump," which consists of dampers that open and admit the warm air that's been blown over the grids (really, the accelerator ribbons) into the car instead of directing it out to the atmosphere, as you'd do during the warmer months. Unfortunately, the dampers have never worked, so for HHR the dampers are manually fastened in the "open" position, then moved back in the spring so that we aren't toasting our passengers in the summer. Steven and Jimmy also discovered that the blades had come out of the small fan that warms the motorman's feet and fixed that, as shown in these before-and-after views.

The issue with the "heat dump" system is that it only works when the car is operating. This isn't a problem on Western Avenue, but at IRM, we tend to make a lot of use of the auxiliary heating system, which consists of a handful of normal coil-wound heaters in the baseboard heat ducts. Unfortunately, at the moment these have a couple of open elements and are nonfunctional. Anyone have a good source for street railway-type coil-wound resistor wire?

Every Dog Has His Day

On Friday I started by replacing one of the windows in the 18.  As we pointed out a while back, the sash are painted with an unusual mottled pattern that we haven't seen elsewhere.  And we don't know exactly how to reproduce it.  The bottom rail on this window is my beginning attempt at matching the pattern.

 It certainly isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than white primer:

And I have some ideas I want to try, so experiments will continue.  Speaking of the 18, Steven showed up to continue painting seats.  I don't believe I had met him before, and I was glad to thank him for all the pictures he's been sending us.  And he was doing a great job on the seats.

Most of the rest of my time was spent on the Jewell Road shelter.  It was just barely warm enough to consider painting, and first I had to do lots more scraping and sanding.  Among other things, the door knob and plate needed to be cleaned up and repainted.

And using some nearby boxes to provide height, some more of the siding got white primer.

Tim was working all day on the interior of the 1808.  The car is completely closed up and heated, and it's somewhat claustrophobifying if you ask me...

But he's been painting the ceiling, installing new trim pieces, rewiring the lights, etc.

So steady progress continues.

Finally, if you think IRM has been going to the dogs, you have no idea.  Friday there were a number of visitors on the property holding sniffer dog trials.  The dogs have to find scented hides that are scattered around in various places, or something like that, as quickly as possible.  The owners were all nice, friendly people, and none of the dogs tried to bite me, so I can't complain.  But it was rather odd.

I'm told that these trials will continue on Saturday and Sunday, so workers and visitors should try to avoid disturbing the activities.  Marcus is in charge of coordinating the whole operation.

And if you like odd things, we can probably find some more.  Stay tuned!

In Memoriam Linda Fenlaciki

 It is with deep sadness that we must report the death of Linda Fenlaciki due to recent illness.  The visitation and funeral arrangements are given here:

  

Line Car News

Rapid progress is being made on the Illinois Terminal line car by Gregg.  See for yourself! 

More goodies have shown up on the line car roof. The raised base for the trolley base was installed.

The tool box lid was in pretty bad shape. A new one was fabricated with the customary padded canvas section.

Here the toolbox is reassembled sitting on the parts box. Both are ready for final painting.

The two boxes getting painted. The large open box was probably used to hold the days necessary parts from being knocked off of the deck. Clamps, hangers and other hardware readily available to the top side crew.

Some of the boards for the lower part of the platform. The 6 insulators will sit on this deck which in turn supports the actual working platform.

This past Friday the view from on top of the line car looking to the east. The concrete contractors were pouring the slabs.

Over 167 cubic yards were used during the long day.

Meanwhile I was able to get everything installed on the roof.

On Sunday, Joel was able to get the trolley base lifted from the floor to the roof deck for me. I soon had it bolted down and the cable attached to the posts. The pole is now getting refurbished and will go on next.

Trolley Bus Teaser

The latest from Richard Schauer regarding progress on our Milwaukee trolley bus:

Work continues on 441, and it changes color every time you look!  The lettering and stripes are now applied.  Yesterday, when I went in, there was a group of employees working away removing masking on every side of the bus, so there weren't any good photos to be had.  So, I've opted for a "teaser" approach to today's update.  More touch-up is needed, as things didn't go 100% perfect, but it remains on schedule.