Birthday Bash

The latest artwork from our friends in the Steam Department:

Spring Cleaning

Aristotle observed that "Nature abhors a vacuum."  I suppose that's why Nature never seems to clean up after herself, but we can't usually get away with that, so it's time to get out a nice shop vacuum and start cleaning in preparation for the operating season.

Today was the first car cleaning day, but it was rather cold and dreary.  Not too many people showed up for the festivities, I regret to say.

But here's my old friend John Myhre, whom I haven't seen for a while, cleaning the 415.

And in the 3142, Larry Stone is cleaning windows, with the careful supervision of Jim West.

I spent some time vacuuming up all four of the CA&E wood cars, plus putting away various tools and parts left over from previous projects, and sorting things out.  In the absence of working car heaters, it was cold enough that window cleaning seemed rather abhorescent.

The 309.

The 308.

The 36.

The 141 is over the pit, and a number of the regulars (Joel, Richard, Nick, Jeron, John Goon, and am I missing anybody?) were working on the control system.  Automatic acceleration systems are fine in theory, but they can fail in ways that are not easy to diagnose or fix.  So I decided to get out of the way and leave these problems to the experts.  But we're confident the problems will be fixed and the car will be operated more often this year.

The PC (pneumatic cam) system on the 141 is quite interesting to watch in action.  Maybe I should have tried to take some action videos, but didn't.  Sorry.

The reverser:

The line switch:

The contactors, with the motor for the cam shaft to the right:

I went over to the Steam Shop to talk to Tom Schneider, who graciously agreed to help us with getting new motor bearings made for the 309.  We'll have more details later, but there's no doubt this will be expensive, so you can expect more blegging in the future.  Heh heh.  Anyway, the Steam Dept. people were very busy; I didn't get any pictures, but the 1630 is being prepped for its hydro test in the near future, and the Shay was being put together towards the same end.  But I was also directed over to the south end of Barn 9.  The 4963 is now in the display line and looks much better.

Several of the other usual Car Dept. projects were being worked on.  But I happened to pass by the Cleveland PCC, where the finishing work on installing the electrical ducts is being completed.  They say they should be able to start pulling wires soon!

Eric is grinding down some welds:

And Ed is doing the welding:

In fact, operating season will be here before you know it.   Like a week from today, Saturday, March 31st.  The "Bunny Trolley Hop" is a new event for this year, and I'm told it's already essentially sold out, and the crew slots are already taken.  Wow!  But later in the season there will be plenty of opportunities for people to help out.  We'll let you know!

CAR CLEANING!

This year's first car cleaning session will be TOMORROW -- Saturday the 24th -- meeting at 10AM at the west end of Barn 7.  All are encouraged to help, and you will be most appreciated!

North America's Transit System of the Year - Part I

Our Toronto Field Reporter Thomas Slater sends this report, the next chapter following Zach's story of a trip to our neighbors to the north...

After spending Saturday at the Halton County Radial Railway museum, the car shop crew spent the day in Toronto to experience what the city had to offer in public transit. As a continuation of the Winterfest festivities, we went on a tour of one of the Toronto Transit Commission’s streetcar shops. So, after waking up bright and early and grabbing breakfast at Tim Horton’s, we made our way to the city and the Leslie Street car barn on the east side of the city.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a line of the TTC’s newest streetcars, the Flexity Outlook, all waiting for their operators to go into service. The Flexities were built by Bombardier with the first car going into service in 2014. These cars are still being built by Bombardier to eventually replace all the older CLRVs and ALRVs on the system.

Leslie car house is the newest and most state-of-the-art shop on the TTC. The front entrance of the building gives the impression of a new, modern shop. But the real treat was inside the shops themselves.

As you can see in these photos, Leslie car house is quite impressive. It was built specifically with the intention of being equipped to service the new Flexities on the system.

This car had just been freshly delivered and has not yet seen a day of service. It’ll never be this clean again!

The first track in the barn is dedicated to truck maintenance. Here we see several of the Flexities trucks.

For comparison, the first truck is off of a CLRV while the second is off of an ALRV.

Here we see the pit and the overhead walkways for servicing the cars.

This section of the shop is dedicated for prepping cars for painting. Although the cars are soon destined for the scrapper’s torch, one of the aging CLRVs is seen here taking a trip through the paint shop, presumably for some touch ups. Out of view of the photo was the paint booth which was closed while we were there, so nothing to see really.

Although, you could take a selfie with the gray paint booth door.

The last track in the building contained the wheel lathe for truing wheel profiles. Our docent told us that the track was the designed to be long enough that a Flexity could get each of its 3 trucks worked on without opening the end doors.

Another interesting aspect of the shop was the Flexity training simulator including a replica operator’s cab and several large rear-projection screens.

Outside the car barn was their storage yard. A number of CLRVs and ALRVs are stored here. And while they may look decent from a distance, a closer inspection revealed that these cars will likely never turn another wheel in service.

Many of these cars are being picked over for parts to keep to healthier cars in service. Note some of the poles are up on a few of the cars. You could hear a few of the car’s converters humming away to keep the batteries charged.

A humorous mishap was pointed out to us in the storage line. Car 4239, an ALRV, was shopped and painted about a year ago. But within a day and a half of service…

It met a car the hard way and bent the frame, making it unfit for service. It looks great though!

While walking through and inspecting the cars, we managed to stop and get a group photo.
As it neared lunch time, so did the end of our tour of Leslie Barn. But, our day in the city was not over as we then ventured into downtown Toronto. Stay tuned for part 2!

Down to the Buzzer

It was too cold today for further painting on the 308, so I turned to fixing a few minor problems on the 319.  First of all, the buzzer at the #1 end was very weak.  You could usually hear it if the car was stationary, but not if it was running.  That's not acceptable.  Unfortunately, it's mounted in a tight spot, as seen here.  The barrier to the right is what's left of the as-built compartment around the cab.

Removing the buzzer was difficult.  I finally got a large soldering iron from the shop and used it to heat up and free the screws holding the buzzer in place.  Once it was free, it was easy to remove.

And while we're at it, we might as well remove the cover for the headlight switch and repaint it.  When the cover is removed, you see this nice big DPDT knife switch.  The DPDT switch is a relic from the original use of carbon arc headlights.  The direction of the current through the headlight was reversed when switching from bright to dim.  That's still the case, although of course with incandescent bulbs it makes no difference.

This cover was relettered in yellow while it was in Cleveland.   Apparently by a five year old.

But with some careful sanding, we can recover the black lettering that's correct for the red paint scheme.  The cover was taken home for repainting. 

And a refurbished buzzer was temporarily installed in the circuit and tested.  It works nice and loud.  It was then taken home for painting.   Next time, I'll have to bring along my soldering gun so it can be permanently wired in the car.

I also spent some time retrieving and sorting various spare parts in storage.  And I removed a buzzer from the 321 and took it home for testing and repainting.

Then I helped John Faulhaber for a while with mounting the new baggage door on the 213 and trying to get it to operated properly.   It still needs a little adjustment.

But it certainly looks nice.  It will eventually be repainted to match the rest of the car.

Pete was using the new spray booth that Buzz constructed.  The exhaust fan helps keep things clean and removes unwanted fumes.

On my trip over to the 321, I found Bob Olsen working on window parts in the 109.

A selection of newly-built windows, although I don't remember which car they're for.

Jon is painting roof parts for the 65.

Ed and Norm are taking a break from their respective projects.

Jeff is working on flooring pieces for the 28, assisted by Rich.

Spring is Here

Frank writes...

Well, spring might not quite be here, at least not for a few more days, but Sunday was a pretty nice day anyway. It was sunny and the high was 50 or so, not too bad for mid-March. As mentioned in my father's post it was nice enough for some painting.

Smiling Volunteers Part 1: here he is adding some fresh "Fleet Grey" to the 308 over in Barn 8. When I showed up he was already hard at work. I figured I'd try and finish what I started so I removed the air gauge from the #2 end of the 308 and took it to the shop for testing. This end of the 308 is rarely used, mainly because it has a unique (among our CA&E fleet) motorman's valve which only has two apply positions. Whereas most M-15 valves have three apply positions - slow, medium, and fast - the one at the #2 end of the 308 only has "fast" and "faster".  That makes it a bit trickier to run with. Why this is, we have no idea, only that it's what was on the car when it was in service so of course it's only proper to leave it in place.

Of course I neglected to get a decent photo of the #2 end gauge (oops) but it's fairly similar to this one, which we acquired as a spare a few years ago. Both are from a different maker, Star, than the Beacon gauge at the #1 end of the 308. Note these only go up to 160 lbs rather than up to 200 lbs like the Beacon gauge. Even this differs from the #2 end gauge in the 308, though, in arrangement of the lettering and attachment screws. But I digress.

The inside of the #2 end gauge was remarkably clean and only needed a little cleaning and oiling of the gear teeth to get it ready for service. Thanks again to Richard for his help and advice with this.

That didn't take long, so I left to help (or maybe I should say I went to "help") with the crew working on Milwaukee 972. This car was cleared for limited service last year but concerns about side bearing clearance on one truck had been raised. So raised it was, on Sunday, this time on jacks. Joel, Richard, Greg, Thomas, Nick, and myself all helped with this effort. Here Nick peers down the length of the car as this end sits raised a few inches on jacks. We just needed to get the car high enough to put some fresh grease "cookies" into the center bearing bowls and pull some shims from one of the side bearings.

Smiling Volunteers Part 2: Richard looks in on the center bearing. If you look closely (directly over the square nut with cotter pin in the very foreground) you'll see that the body half has been raised above the bowl, attached to the truck bolster, so that Joel can drop in the grease cookies from inside the car through the motor motor inspection hatches.

Won't you all give Joel a hand, ladies and gentlemen!

After this the car was pulled east and the other end jacked up to repeat the operation, though no shims needed removal at that end. After a test trip or two around the car line measurements were taken again and were satisfactory, so with the completion of annual inspection items the 972 should again be cleared for limited service. It's still in the "running-in" phase so the shop workers will be keeping a close eye on it for a while, but look for this car on the car line on a few days this coming season.

As usual, there were other projects being worked on as well. Bob Sundelin, our resident machinist, had an unusual bolt for an RPO (I think) on the lathe and had also been making parts for the grinding machine out in the barn, while Thomas and Nick were still slaving away at getting the 4410 ready for service, repairing more leaky air valves. And in other good news I ran into Mark Secco, who is working on repairing the CGW wrecker. Once that's done it can be moved and Shaker Heights 18 can be brought up to Barn 7.