Trolley Bus Department

Friday afternoon/evening was spent doing a little more cleaning in the interior of the Seattle 633.  With the exception of a little of the floor, the inside is immaculate (well, almost).

Freshly painted NYCTA Subway Cars on the tail track 09/06/2009.

On Saturday, Howard Geier worked on installing the glass in the newly fabricated rear doors of the Des Moines Brill “Curbliner”.  Richard Schauer provided service using the Chicago Marmon 9553 for many happy visitors.  Jerry Saunders and I worked Saturday and Sunday on a “Home Depot” paint job on the NY Subway Cars.  They were starting to look a little shabby, so the investment of $75 and a couple days work got them looking pretty nice.  They are scheduled to make their service debut on Member’s Day.  Hopefully, mechanically the cars will cooperate.

NYCTA Cars at Johnson Siding 09/06/2009.

On Monday, Richard and I finished up what we could on the equipment roster including measuring the new switcher on the connector track.  The file will now be sent to the department curators for them to approve and fill in some still missing blank spaces.

In the “when it rains, it pours” category, after some delays in both, it looks like the Edmonton BBC and the SF Fageol from OERM will BOTH be delivered next weekend.  No guarantee, but right now that’s the way things are looking.

This weekend in the Trolley Bus Department was a “For the good of the museum” weekend.  After finishing up cleaning the interior of the Seattle 633 on Friday, Richard Schauer and I spent the day Saturday working on the roster of equipment.  We walked the entire campus, inventorying, and if necessary measuring pieces in the collection.  There are still some numbers missing that we couldn’t get with a tape measure (weights, builders, build dates), so curators, you’ll be hearing from us soon to try and fill in some gaps.  There were only about 10 pieces that we still haven’t located.  We weren’t able to get down to 4-mile, so that number will dwindle once we check what’s down there.

On Sunday, Richard worked at the entrance gate for Vintage and I accompanied a crew from Comcast who was out taping for a special they are doing on the Museum.  Once I find out when it is scheduled to air, I’ll let you know.

Next week we will be pulling out 4 coaches (633, 4020, 9553, 925) to live outside for a few weeks to accommodate the model railroad setup that annually appears in the Andersen Garage during Thomas.  This will be the last year that the Andersen Garage will be used for this, as the additional coaches that are arriving from Edmonton and OERM will make it impractical.

Last weekend Howard Geier came out and worked all day Saturday buffing the Seattle 633.  It looks fantastic!  We are almost finished doing a cleaning of the interior also, so we finally got rid of 30 years worth of accumulated desert dust.  Jerry Saunders worked on finding replacement wheels for the street side rear since that was the tire that blew a couple weeks ago.  He found 2 for that side, we still need to search a little more for the curb side, which is still missing one.  As soon as we have a complete set of wheels, we are going to need to buy a new set of tires.  That’s another $1,500 – donations to the Trolley Bus Department are GREATLY appreciated!

This weekend Richard Schauer and I went out to OERM to identify parts that will come with the other coaches and what is needed to restore the LA coach.  It was over 100 degrees both days and inside the parts boxcars was pretty toasty to say the least.  The OERM guys helped us out by moving the boxcars into their Carhouse 7, so at least we didn’t bake out in the sun.  Thanks!

Richard Schauer and OERM's John Smatlak pick out trolley poles that will be used on the LA coach.

Richard goes through some of the stacks of trolley coach parts stored in OERM's boxcars.

We believe that we have our Edmonton coach picked out.  It will most likely be coach 181.  Richard is in the process of getting all the shipping paperwork in order – we are anticipating arrival by Labor Day.