As of the last update, the car had most of a roof, a functioning air system, and one complete controller. The borrowed type 5 trucks had been adapted, and the car was placed over the inspection pit. A few of these topics haven't been covered, however, so let's briefly circle back to them.
A view of the #2 end (east) july of 2025
3001 outside for the first time in many years
while being moved over the inspection pit
3001's original trucks are Brill 77E's, and while the motors have had their armatures rebuilt, ther rest of the truks are in rather rough condition. As such, and to get the car "paying it's own bills" as it were, we are using a set of trucks from a boston type 5, which are C35's There are a few things that require adapting between the two. 77E's use a link bar to actuate the brakes, where as on a C35, there is what's called a radius bar. As such, new rods had to be fabricated to connect the trucks brakes the the linkages under the car. Luckily, a few old switch throw rods prooved to be just the material needed, and their threaded ends allowed them to be made adjustable. The center bowls are also different, with Conn Co using a very different size than Boston Elevated. A solution came in the form of an adapter plate. However, due to the bolt holes for a Conn Co plate just slightly overlapping the bolt holes in the bolster of the C35 trucks, the Conn Co bowl had to be clocked 90 degrees from it's "normal" position. Luckily, though, as all the mating surfaces are circular and meant to rotate, this solution works perfectly, though it does look a little funny.
One of the Adapter plates, showing the Conn Co center
Bowl being clocked 90 Degrees to how it
would normally be placed.
New Brake rod connecting to the truck. Return springs are also installed.
The main barrel of the roof was fairly easy to complete, as it's all toung and groove boards just following a curved surface. Forming the ends, or the vestibules, presents more of a challenge. The radius is changing all of the time, and the boarding has to bend in multiple directions at once, in many cases twisting severely. This is work that is somewhat more familiar to builders of wooden boats, as a lot of the same ideas are present planking the curves of a ships hull. The ribbing to support the roof was in rough shape, and had to be replaced. Voulenteer charlie nordell stepped in and made up the ribs, which the boarding sits ontop of. The boarding making up the main barrel of the roof is half in thick, but for the rapidly curving ends this is too thick to be bent effectively. As such, a large amount of lumber had to be ripped down vertically on the table saw, giving think stripping thin enough to make the bends. On the edges of the roof, where the planking has to twist, the boards were cut down again, this time in the horizontal dimension. With much slow triming, twisting, and planing into place the east end roof is together. Work on the west vestibule has yet to start.
New Ribbing and the start of the roofing going on
Corner of the vestibule roof, showing how the planking has
to twist and be cut into a wedge shape to fit
Steel work has also been ongoing. The car is officially now 2 doors again, with the holes made by Conn Co to adapt the car plugged by entirely new material. A local fabrication company was contracted to produce some of the custom formed pieces of steel that had rotted away, or had been removed by conn co, over the years. This includes the upper header panels abovethe motormans windows where it had been removed when the car was converted to 4 door, as well as all the window sill plates. The end sheets on both ends are hund, and the upper header panel on the east end has also been installed. Angle iron inside the car that supports the seats were replaced where missing, and a whole bunch of new seat mounting brackets were made up. Some work has also been put into covering over seams and patches with a thin layer of bondo, to hide where repairs have been made.
Some patches being welded in on the east end door corner
Sill plates running the length of the car
Sills in and window frames test fit
Plug filling in where the added door had been on the west end,
Also showing the replacement header panel
Bondo and Primer covering up weld seams
Underneath the car, components have been finding their way into place. The line switch is mounted, and plumbed into the air system. Resistor grids are mounted, after one had to be entirely rebuilt after failing a Meg test. One modification we are making to the car is a disconnect knife switch as a saftey feature. This has been both fabricated and installed.
Knife switch box being fabricated
Knife switch box hung from car
First of the grids to be hung. This is the
Grid that required a full rebuild
The most active current part of the project is wiring. Conecting both controllers to the resistors, and then to the motors, as well as the line switch and distribution box , is not a particularly complex undertaking, so long as you have a diagram, and a basic idea of how the system works. It is, however, tedious. To give a sense of scale, each controller has 22 wires that has to run into it those wirs split between a bank of 3 resistor grids, the line switch that supplies power, and the 4 motors, that each have 4 wires run to them. A great deal of the work has been in building the infrastructure into the car to handle the wires. There is a tough that runs inside the car for much of it's own length, all of the wiring has to be run through it. Each motor has it's own junction box, as well as a single large box for the resistor bank. Underneath the car wooden bracketry has to be built to hold up the wire runs. All of this is being custom built and fit. Nothing is an off the shelf component. This work is about 2/3rds complete, as the car has taken up the 500 foot spool, as well as couple hundred, feet of wire we had not sooled, that consitituted our entire supply of 2 gauge railroad rated wire. We are in the process of ordering more.
Junction boxes for each of the 4 motors
Motor 4's Junction box installed with wiring taking shape
Choke coil and hanger brackets to hold the wire
Junction box for the Resistor Wiring
Wiring beginning to fill out the box
Wiring Trough running the length of the car
East end controller mounted in the car, with
much of the wiring installed
Earlier was mentioned that as of last update one controller was in, since then a second has been rebuilt and installed. However, things are not quite as simple as they first appeared, and we have since ended up having to go back and rebuild the first controller we put in the car. The issues have been resolved, but the details of why we had to re-rebuild a controller, as well as a few other interesting controller related anomalies, warrant their own post in the near future, so keep an eye out for that.
P.Beard
Shop Manager
