CCW 300 Video

As reported on RyPN, an excellent color movie of fan trips on the Charles City Western including our #300 in action has been recently posted here.  It's all good, but the 300 segment is from about 4:05 to 7:15.  Enjoy.

I've Got a Secret

 ... but it's being saved for last.  Meanwhile, Larry Stone was out to help again today, so we concentrated on projects for which a second person is a definite asset.  In the morning, we worked on the new wooden beams to support the grid boxes. Photography here is difficult, to say the least.  One beam was easier to replace, so it was installed and the new bolts have all been put in place with their washers and nuts.  The nuts have not been tightened, of course, but at least now the boxes can't just be accidentally knocked off the platform.

The second beam is much harder to remove, due to the bolts sticking out of it, so I'll have to cut it in half.  The new one should then be easy enough to install.  So this project is going well.

In the afternoon we worked on the last two third rail beams for the 36.   All of the major holes were drilled.

None of our drill presses have a sufficient range to enable the vertical holes through the beam to be drilled in one pass, so we have to start from both ends and hope they meet in the middle with minimal offset, in the same way that the Moffat Tunnel was dug, for instance.   As they say, two heads are better than one, so the holes we drilled all met with an imperceptible error. 

 The castings need to be wire brushed before they are painted, but we'll save that for next week.  Here you can see that the bolts at least line up for attaching the sleet scraper cylinder.   Man, these parts are heavy!  I cannot explain how they can have gotten heavier over the past twenty years or so, but it's true.  

And of course many other projects were progressing.  Buzz Morrisette is working on making new roll signs for the 24, and in the process he also graciously agreed to make a single panel for our Lake Shore Electric car 150, since we don't have all of the roll sign mechanism.  I made a tentative drawing of a destination based on the available photographs. Buzz improved the artwork considerably, and it will look like this, though with white (transparent) letters on a black background.  And the sign box itself is backlit.  So that will be nice.  Then the sign box can be mounted on the front of the 150. 

Explanation: An LSE car running west from Cleveland in the early days could run through Toledo, and then over the Detroit United Railway to Detroit, taking about six hours to make the trip.  Between Ceylon Junction and Fremont on the LSE there were two routes: a northern route through Sandusky and a southern route through Norwalk.  So this sign tells you what you need to know to reach your destination. 

And Bill was working on light fixtures for the ceiling of the 24, so they look as good as new, if not better.  Lots of other stuff was going on, but I didn't get a picture.  So you'll just have to take my word for it.

Anyway, a significant milestone has been reached on one of our Car Dept. projects, but for reasons which I am not allowed to explain, we are forbidden to reveal it until Tuesday.  So you will just have to wait until then for pictures and details.  Ha ha!

Grando, Nix, et Cetera

Over the weekend the Chicago area got about a foot and a half of global warming dumped on it, one of the bigger snowstorms in recent memory.  But IRM has the tools and the talent to take care of these things, so the property was well plowed out on Monday, and everything was more or less open for business on Tuesday.  Thanks, guys!!!

I started heating the car up, and worked on sanding in the vestibule and other tasks before putting a first finish coat on the remaining arm rests in the vestibule.  There's not much left to do.

Since the ceiling is completely painted, the cord for the conductor's valve was reconnected and tested.  But while the paint is drying, let's see what else is going on today.

 Jeff Brady (not shown) was welding up the sheet metal covering for the wall of the baggage compartment in the 28.  Here we see the custom brake for bending the steel, with two pipes as handles.

 

Tim is working on the long seat frames for the 24, as mentioned before.

The 2100's have been moved from 2 to 6, where the guys are installing grab irons and I don't know what else.  Across the aisle, it's Line Car City!

And Gerry is working on the D-13.  A few weeks ago, I posted a recording of the whistle.  Did you wonder why it sounded so bad?  There was a large wasp's nest stuffed inside!  With that gone, it should work much better.

And I slapped some black paint on the grid box beams.  In front of them are some of the parts Gerry is finishing for the dump motor.

Well, enough railfanning, back to the 36.  Once the smoker was nice and toasty, the entire floor got a first coat of finish brown.

Here you can see the difference between the dry primer and the (wet) finish paint.  The floor certainly looks better than it used to: see the last picture here.

(By the way, the title of this post means "sleet, snow, and the rest".  It's a quote from Orff's Carmina Burana which I happen to be rehearsing these days.  Quite appropriate.)

Get Your Hands Off Our Goose!

From Colorado, our friend Joseph Becker reports on an argument over the legal possession of an historic artifact, Galloping Goose #5 from the RGS.  There's a lengthy article in the current issue of the Dolores Star which you should be able to access, at least for a day or two, here.

Briefly, the town believes it still has legal ownership of the Goose, whereas the historical society (and before that the Rotary Club) have been maintaining, restoring, and operating it for more than 50 years, believing it was theirs.  This is an example of how legal agreements from long ago can come back to haunt you.  Hmm, where have we heard that before?

I'm not aware of anything at IRM whose ownership might be disputed like this, but you never know.

The Wilkins Update, Part 3-Colorado: The Highest State

David writes.....

Evidently, sales of this book have picked up ever since Colorado made certain public policy changes recently:

 

What is one to do in Downtown Denver without a rental car? I found myself standing outside of a shop in downtown. The word "Pharmacy" was in quotation marks on the sign, and a Jamaican flag was hanging out front. Instead of exploring it, I decided to go find some railroad-related activity to explore. It was snowing pretty heavily the day I was there, so I opted out of a cab trip to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, which is mostly outdoors. I opted, instead for a trip to the Forney Museum in Denver. Randall has visited the museum before. Instead of rehashing Randall's visit, here are some observations:

 

They repainted the CB&Q business car in the paint scheme it wore in private ownership. The owners painted it up to celebrate the Illinois sesquicentennial.

I get a feeling that they chose to repaint the business car in this scheme as the car had an interior modified from its days on the Burlington.

The C&NW 4-6-0 is looking rather good, freshly repainted, right down to the tender herald:

I think this was a 1955 Chevrolet. My basis is the shape of the grille.  Any other guesses?

This former Colorado & Southern wooden coach hid some ghastly secrets:

 

The Denver cable car has an "interesting" journal box lid. 

Model T Fords do not have a lot of leg room.

The backhead of the Union Pacific Big Boy 4005 is well labeled. 

The Wilkins Update, Part 2-Trip to Denver

David writes......

It has been a fairly busy start to 2015 for me. The business began back in December, when I was rushing to complete projects in time to leave for two weeks for the Christmas holiday. Katy and I returned to Salt Lake City on January 2, after an epic 4,000 mile drive across America, all the way to Kentucky and back.

I returned to the office on Saturday the 3rd to find a giant pile of stuff on my desk. To top it off, I had a trial in the United States District Court for Utah scheduled on the 12th, so I spent the first week back getting ready. The trial took all week, and then I had to turn around and travel to Denver to appear before the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit on the 21st. I decided that the best way to isolate myself the day before the appearance in Denver, giving me time to prepare without interruption was to take the train, so I booked my outbound passage on Amtrak train #6, the California Zephyr.

 

Randall has taken the CZ to Denver a few times. Lucky for him, since he boards in Naperville, near the train's eastern terminus, he can board at a decent time.  Here in Salt Lake City, the eastbound CZ is due in at 3:05 am. The night before, I went to bed early and got about 4 hours of sleep before the alarm awoke me at 2:00 am. After a quick drive downtown, I found myself waiting on the platform to board.

 

Due to a winter fare sale, I was able to book a roomette, which had the bed already made for me when I boarded. I changed back into my pajamas and was sound asleep by the time the train hit Provo. I woke up after the train crested Soldier Summit, as my ears hadn't popped yet. I took some decongestant and was back to sleep, only to wake up in Southern Utah.

I woke again as the train traveled through Ruby Canyon on the Utah-Colorado boarder. After a lake breakfast, I had my bed made up and went to work.  In addition to rereading my appellate brief, I kept out the Amtrak timetable, the Altamont Press timetable for the line and my trusty Elgin B.W. Raymond pocket watch to keep track of progress. 

 

The CZ makes several stops long enough to get out and stretch your legs. Here are photos from the stops at Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs and Winter Park. Just outside Glenwood Springs at Dotsero, we met the westbound CZ, train #5. We are parked on the leg of the wye that would take us down the now out-of-service D&RGW Tennessee Pass line. After backing up the wye, we headed up to Osterod (Dotsero spelled backwards) where we joined the former Denver & Salt Lake for the trip into Denver. The Moffat Tunnel cut about 170 miles off of the trip from Salt Lake City to Denver.

After Winter Park, we traveled through the Moffat Tunnel, exiting in a flurry of snow.  Traveling down the series of 10 degree curves, called the Big 10, we arrived at the newly-renovated Denver Union Station on time. It was a short walk to my hotel for a good night's sleep. The next morning, it was an even shorter walk to the Byron White U.S. Courthouse. I finished up my court appearance early, and had time to visit the Forney Museum, which will be covered in another post.

Wire You Complaining?

We're very fortunate we haven't been hit with a huge snowstorm as they have in Boston, for instance, where my daughter lives.  We can easily get out and drive over to the Museum, for instance.  So let's accentuate the positive.

For starters, I made two replacement beams for the grid boxes from white oak.   They have been drilled, except for the holes at the support beams, which I want to mark in place.

You can see the original wood had some problems.

The bolt heads were mortised into the wood, and then held in place with four nails and a thin strip of wood over that.  That weakens the structure a little, and contributed to the crack seen above.  So we will probably avoid the mortises.

Here are the new beams with primer.  Rod will order new nuts and bolts for this project.

 

After that, it was time for more painting in the smoker.  I finished prepping the other three arm rests and painted them with white primer.

 And then, the floor got its second coat of brown primer.  As I mentioned before, the wet primer looks quite a bit like the finish brown color. 

 So the end is in sight!   I also went over to check on the 321.  The tarp is leaking slightly in places, which is somewhat discouraging, but the car should probably not get much worse before we can put it inside one of the new barns.

 As promised, Tim has started working on the seats for the 24 (1024).  The nearer frame is about 15' long, making it hard to handle.  These may be a real challenge to restore.  The only seating in the car is the two long bench seats against both side walls.  This arrangement caused these cars to be generally known as "Bowling Alleys".

And in fact, I believe that's exactly what they were used for when unexpected service delays occurred, and passengers would otherwise get bored.  I'm not sure whether it was the conductor's or the motorman's job to reset the pins.

Finally, Max has been hard at work resetting the trolley wires over the leads to Barn 7.   The barn leads have been a weak link in the overhead system for quite a while.  It may not be obvious from this picture, but it represents a big improvement over the previous condition of the wire.   Thanks, Max!

The Wilkins Update, Part 1-Traveling Home for Christmas

David writes....

My Christmas card from Randall included a note that he expected more content from me for the blog, even though I live out in Utah, so here it goes.

Katy and I drove home for Christmas. In all, we were gone for thirteen days, visited ten states and drove through seven state capitals. We put about 4,000 miles on Katy's car. We drove first to Kentucky to see my parents and family, then to Rolla, Missouri to spend time with her family.  On the 27th, I spend the day in St. Louis and visited old friends at the Museum of Transportation. Things are going well there. It was rainy that day, so I only managed to get this one photo of Norfolk & Western 2156. It's a Y-6a class 2-8-8-2 that is being prepped for a long term loan to the Virginia Museum of Transportation. I understand the work is complete, just waiting to be moved.

We took different routings on the outbound and inbound trips. Leaving Salt Lake City, we took I-80 to Omaha where we overnighted with some friends. We then drove to Kentucky via Kansas City, St. Louis and Louisville. On the return trip, we took I-70, overnighting in Denver. Here, on January 2, the last day of the trip we spot Amtrak train # 6, the eastbound California Zephyr in Glenwood Canyon.  Coming back, we encountered quite a bit of snow in Colorado. I don't know what they put on the roads there, but by the time we arrived in Green River, Utah, the car looked like it had been used in a Mad Max movie. I had to wash the headlights off at the last gas stop. Seeing the CZ inspired me to seek alternate transportation for my upcoming trip to Denver, which will be covered in another forthcoming post.

In other news, this past Saturday I attended a makeup annual rules review/exam at the Heber Valley Railroad. Back in December, I received the sign-off on my paperwork that I could be a conductor after the trainmaster shadowed me for a trip, run around and all.  I am now fully certified as a Conductor at the Heber Valley Railroad. Here's my certification card. Honestly, they also took a picture of me smiling as well, but for some reason chose to use this one.

Don't despair, I have some more posts lined up with other railroad related activities that are occurring with me out here in Utah.