Illinois Railway Museum Blog

On Saturday morning, Roger Broms and I arrived about 8:30am and started getting some parts and tools ready to remove the #5 motor and wheel combo. We started the 8537, the US Army 45 tonner, which would be used later to move the 6847 over the drop table. Roger gathered some parts while I moved the new motor over to the steam shop under their new overhead crane. Meanwhile, Nigel and Ralph, and some others were removing the roof from the drop table, and getting the safety fence setup along with other some other items around the table. Jeff Calendine ran the forklift to remove two freight car trucks that were on the lead south of the table and in the way. The 6847 was facing south so we could close the railroad doors behind the shop to keep the heat in the shop.

Roger Broms and Bob Milhaupt drilled the last holes in the wheel clamps we made the night before so we could place a clevis on them to attach a chain from there. Roger Bradshaw began prepping the new motor, taking off the support bearing caps and cleaning everything up. Scott Nauer and I removed the last pedestal cross bar and the bracket that holds the traction motor nose pack pins in place. We then moved the 8537 to the steam shop and began to shove the 6847 over the table, lining up the #5 axle in the middle of the table.  We tied everything down and moved the 8537 back into the shop out of the way.

We blocked up the nose end of the motor. One of the bolts on the rubber pack was broken so we couldn't compress it to remove it easily, so we just let the motor tilt more and more, added blocking as we lowered until the rubber pack was free to be removed. We then lowered the combo the rest of the way, slid over the table and raised it back up to let the Bay City crane lift the combo off the table to where the forklift could reach under it. Jeff moved the combo over to the shop near the new motor.

After draining the oil from the support bearings, removing the bearing wick assemblies, and removing the gear cases, we setup both motors on their ends. This way we could eventually lift the wheel off the bad motor, rotate 180 degrees, and onto the new motor. After setting the combo on its end, we could see there was a very large gap for the lateral motion between the motor and axle, well over a 1/4" gap on the comm end of the combo. We started tearing down the support bearing caps and pulled the top bearing shells out. We could immediately see excessive wear on one end of the axle where the flange end of the support bearing meets the wheel. The gear end looks like the gear had been moved or hammered over by almost a 1/8" as it wasn't lining up how it is supposed to be with the marks on the axle.  The bearing shells were worn in certain spots and galling in other spots. At this point we figured there was no way to complete the job today and do it right.

Roger said if we could get the wheels, new motor and a few of the other required parts to his shop on Monday, they would press the gear into the right spot, machine the axle bearing surfaces and reassemble the combo with new bearings. Hopefully we will have the complete combo back by Wednesday before the holiday so it can be reinstalled Saturday. We started cleaning everything up, moving the motors back to the diesel shop inside on pallets. We removed the roller bearing boxes from the axle and placed those along with everything else on pallets. We dragged the 6847 back into the south end of the steam shop and put the 8537 away.

It'll be an extra week that we hadn't planned on, at least the job will be done right and everything will be back together with the proper limits and good bearings. Tentatively we are planning on installing the combo this coming Saturday if everything works out and there are people available on the holiday weekend. Sorry there are no pictures with this update, there were a number of people taking them, but most of them left before we were done so I couldn't ask to use them here.