Illinois Railway Museum Blog

As usual, there was a lot going on around the property, and a major effort to continue to set up and be ready for the first day of the Thomas Event, Friday August 18.  Here are a few pics I caught in our wood shop.

Arrested

Lorne Tweed and Eric Lorenz are working and doing some tests on a lightning arrestor for our Cleveland Transit System 4223.  On this PCC car there are a number of functions that get mounted to the new trolley boards on the roof.  Here is a lightning arrestor, electrically a LARGE capacitor.  It is connected to the hot lead at 600 volts DC and the other end is wired to the car frame or ground.  Under normal operations it acts as an open circuit, infinite resistance.  In the event of a lightning strike to the overhead or near infrastructure, it goes to zero resistance and provides a path to ground, hopefully safely dissipating the voltage before damaging the car or its occupants.

Paint

Lorne was busy painting the finish enamel on many of the components to comprise the roof mounted hardware.  That little casting in cream paint is a sort of elbow to be mounted on the metal roof and through which passes the 600 volt cable to power the car.

Beading

Buzz Morisette volunteered for an unexpected or last minute job, to make new custom profile very thin molding to be new window beading.  Jon Fenlaciki had removed the rear window of our first car, Indiana Railroad 65, and was working to refinish and reglaze it.  The old beading could not be salvaged.

Plan Ahead

We all know how important it is to plan ahead.  In this case that can only be done by looking behind at old plans and drawings.  It is really amazing how much technical data was saved for many of the cars in our collection.  Bill Wulfert is working on restoration of two sign boxes for Chicago Rapid Transit 1797 while Tim Peters studies an old print to resolve an issue.