Illinois Railway Museum Blog

With all our protective rubber back from the lab we're ready to work safely for another year.  This warm weather feels great.  The frost is just about out of the ground making digging by hand possible.  Things have dried enough to allow access to work locations again.

This week was spent finishing up some old projects.  Monday, was telephone day.  A new cable was run from the terminal box on the East wye to barn 3.  This will replace the underground cable that got an "oops" with a trenching machine a couple of years ago.  This new 12 pair cable was installed in existing ring run then ty-rapped to a #6 copper wire to drop to the barn.

Tuesday, I replaced the rusty spanwire and finished transferring equipment on the poles in front of the depot.  A new down guy was installed and everything was pulled up tight and served permanent.  All the old wire was removed and old poles cut up.  All that remains is to pull the pole butt and clean up.

Wednesday, the forecast rain never fell.  So, Roger and I did some more telephone work.  A 6 pair cable was fished through existing ring run from the terminal box at the east end of Central Ave. along the tracks and over the diamond.  This is a particularly congested area.  With the tail track, yard tracks and carline converging, there is literally a spiderweb of trolley wire, span wire, pull-offs and feeder at that location.  Setting up and maneuvering the bucket through all that wire, to reach the telephone messenger, was time consuming.  We eventually got that cable in the 3 spans of existing ring run.  Next, we had to turn a 90 and head to our destination-The Hoffman Bus Garage.

That would involve installing new ring run for two spans over hot trolley wire and the trolley bus line to a steel pole near the building.  Then, a drop to the building.  We began by rubbering up the yard track trolley wire.  Then proceeded to string a 1/4" EHS galvanized messenger across the yard track.  After pulling enough slack in the 6 pair cable to reach the building, we strung that across the yard track.  The messenger was permanently deadended on one side and temporarily clamped on the other.  The 6 pair was clipped in a couple of rings to clear the trolley wire and the rubber was removed.  We coiled up the excess wires and called it a day!

Most of Thursday and Friday were spent in the office getting quotes on materials for other projects and chasing down an operating coil to fix the Depot St. street lights.  Although I did spend some time in the material yard looking for a 6" pole clamp.  I was also able to fix a damaged down guy and get the trolley bus wye back in service.

Saturday found me at IRM before the sun.  Picking up the telephone job where I left it.  The safest way to continue, after giving things a good look, was to deenergize the trolley bus line.  There was too much hot wire and special work to cross over with a bare steel messenger.  The line was switched out and grounds were applied.  I then proceeded to string the messenger and 6 pair cable to the steel pole near the building.  With the messenger pulled tight and deadended I began to snap the 6 pair in rings.  Working back cable rings were installed every 18 inches.  Johnney balls were installed in the messenger on ether side of the trolley wire where they crossed.  Bonding around the insulated sections was also installed.  The johnney balls create an insulated section of messenger over hot trolley wire.  This prevents a short circuit and the resulting damage in the event a trolley pole dewires and contacts both the trolley wire and the grounded telephone messenger.  The bonding maintains continuity of ground around the insulated section.

With rings installed I worked on the drop to the building.  A #6  solid, hard drawn, insulated copper wire was strung from the steel pole to the building and the 6 pair cable was ty-rapped to it every 9".  The cable was run into the building and awaits termination by our phone guys Les and Wally.

That ended a busy week for me at IRM's A/C-D/C Line DEPT.