Car Shop update, First half of 2025

 The cold of winter has long given way to the heat of summer, and oh how neither has been pleasant. 

At the top of this year, a great deal of time was put into doing fleet maintenance, inspection, and general light improvments. Between some controller issues on the west end, and other cars being urgently needed for service, much of our work once again focused in on car 16. we also took the opportunity to do some cosmetic work to the car, pulling both of the cargo doors and revarnishing them. 

16's west end controller being gone through,

servere wear on the drum propted replacement of nearly all

the elements on fingers.

One of the cargo doors with it's first coat

of new varnish applied. Each received at least 3 coats

of marine grade varnish.

Freshly Varnished door back in place on 16

With the 85th anniversary, and it's parade of trains, approaching, 16 was finished just in time to get the rest of the fleet quickly inspected and prepared. May 11th we had 6 street cars, a line car, an
interurban, and both a diesel and electric locomotive in service. We're happy to report that during the whole day there were no mechanical faults with any of our equipment. 

18 and 303 being prepped for the 85th

anniversary

After the 85th event, and partialy due to us quickly running out of places for running cars to be under cover, we've had a rather lare denizen of the shop. CA&E 303 has been living on shop track 2, where 3001 had previously been sitting for nearly a decade. Our resident control group and rapid transit, Gio, has somewhat adopted the cars and put a great deal of effort into fixing it's multitude of small idisincracies.

Due to having to run on the Chicago El, 303 

is actually quite a narrow car, leaving more room to walk

around it than many of our streetcars. However, it's 

height is immense, with only a few inches betwen the poles

and the overhead contact rail.

The true scale of 303 alongside 3001.

 The car has long had an issue where second point on the controller (both ends) is completely dead, and does not supply power to the motors. With help from the Hicks's of IRM, we were able to sort out the issue. During their time on the CA&E, the 300 series cars had their control groups modified to a C-21 version of the GE type M control. However, to save money, the CA&E just re-used the old C-6 controllers, just modifying them with an internal jumper.  What all this means, if that if you try to wire in the control stands as if they were C-6's, you end up with a second point that instead of supplying power to the contactors, loops two grounds together, causing you to loose power. Most likely, that is the source of the error. Luckily, it's an easy fix. With the correct diagrams from IRM, it was as simple as moving  the positions of a few wires, and second point returned to life.

Gios' Girlfriend, Regina, has also been spending time on 303. She has been producing curtains for the windows, intended to cover where the CA&E removed stained glass and simply boarded over where it had been. She has also been spending time to painstackingly refesh all of the painted writing and labelling inside the car. 

Curtains in 303

Refreshing the lettring inside the car

Not all of the work being done in the shop has been neccescerially just on the cars. Shop forces and expertice has been put to good use outside of building as well this year. During last december we assisted in the shipping out of two trucks that had formerly belonged to Springfield Terminal 8, a line car that was sadly lost to fire. These trucks are now off to as new home in New Jersey where they will end up under another car being restored down there. In a similar moving vein, the shop was on hand to help with the move of the "dining car" from it's location atop the parking lot and back onto the main line, to get it safely out of the way of the new drainage and paved parking lot going in. This was a difficult task that required expertly moving the fragile wooden car 90 degrees, down a hill, and onto the rails underneath the trolley wire, all whilst construction vehicles zipped around. The car is now safely resting in hartmans siding. The machine shop has also been spun up to assist track department. Joint bars for an emergency repair in Hancock siding needed to be reprofiled, and our Greaves-Cincinatti milling machine made short work of it. 

Iron Mountain's 35,000 pound forklift gently carries

one of 8's trucks from where it had been sitting for decades

The "Dining" car sitting on NR1

The Cincinnati Mill working through a joint bar.

While there has always been the background haze of running repair work, 1326 loosing a compressor motor brush, 355 having a litney of issues with it's catchers, 16's air governor jamming, as well as many MANY other issues, the major project and center of our focus, is 3001. Same as it has been now for quite some time. A lot has gone on with said car, and to go through it all here would make this post rather long. As such, a 3001 specific post will be coming shortly. 

P.Beard

Shop Manager