Illinois Railway Museum Blog

We are still making some progress on the auxiliary electrical systems on the Sand Springs 68.  In keeping with the date, there were more tricks and one treat.

The Bell System

No, not the telephone company, but the passenger signal system that is installed (mostly) in the car.  We have been struggling to develop the schematic and thought we had that figured out.  First, pushing any of the buttons would not work any bell or buzzer.  (Note that the finished car will have buzzers, but for this testing we were able to rig up a circuit using a doorbell ringer.)   Later, they worked fine, ALL THE TIME, would not stop ringing.  The symptoms indicated that one or more of the bell buttons, or the wiring, had a short, so you could not interrupt the circuit.

Bob Sundelin contributed another of his volunteer days to the effort, and brought along some pretty fancy test equipment.  It seemed to confirm a short somewhere in the system, but we were not successful in interpreting the readings to pinpoint the problem. 

Back to the old fashioned way.  Note that two weeks ago the car interior was basically complete and assembled.  Now, seat boxes have been opened up, wall panels removed, trim off where needed, all three curtain boxes on the north side removed, and we were still not able to find the problem.  So we began removing more trim and exposing the buttons and wires feeding them.  There are ten buttons on that side of the car - wisely we had isolated the other side in our search for the short.  That cut the number of possibilities in half, yet we had to expose number 8 out of 10 before something obviously suspicious was found.  We inserted an insulating card between the offending contacts.  PRESTO, the bell started ringing on demand as a button was depressed.

Of course nothing is ever that simple.  Some of the buttons exhibited intermittent contact or just plain refused to make contact at all and complete the circuit, those may have to be replaced.  But the thinking part of our analysis was confirmed.  Above, see Ray Bellock and Bob Sundelin pushing buttons and making a racket.

More Paint

Jim Windmeier is becoming a Sunday morning regular on his step box project.  Here he is applying the first coat of Pullman green to the box bodies - and you can see the top step plates painted silver.

There was lots of other work going on in the Barn 4 shops and barn area, despite clear indications that winter is coming.  It was really 'cool' in the barn.  Jeff Brady and Dan Fenlaciki were seen installing another roof panel on the Michigan Electric 28, more maintenance and other inspection on North Shore 714, and the list goes on.