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CAR DEPARTMENT WORK ORDERS - 2009
by Rick Henn
| 1/2009 This time of year, from November to January, is a slow time in terms of what gets done on the coaches and parlor car. The reason is that they don’t sit still long enough. It’s a time when the Car Department catches up on some little things, like window shades, and some not so little things, like oil and filter changes for the diesel generators that provide heat and light in the cars. One project that Mike Dorofy started over the summer and was able to complete recently was the redecorating of the lounges in the coaches. All of the old pictures that hung over the over the couches have been replaced with large photographs of the Falls Road trains with our coaches. Many smaller pictures now adorn the walls. These are of local interest and have come from a number of individuals in addition to Mike, including Geno Dailey, Dave Armitage, and Joe Kocis, among others. Each lounge has become a sort of rolling picture gallery. Mostly, what happens now is the planning for next season. It looks as if the highly successful Wine Trains will be running more frequently throughout the summer and fall of 2009. Thomas, the Tank Engine is due back in May. So, getting the preparatory work completed will be a real challenge. High on the list of major projects will be replacing coupler parts to ensure that the couplers function properly. Two couplers represents a nearly $3,000 investment in parts in addition to considerable labor on the part of the members of the Car Department. Also, one, and possibly two, wheel sets will have to be changed out soon. The wheels will have been inspected by the time that you read this, and a determination will have been made as to how much longer they can be used. Changing the wheel sets will require hiring Winter’s Rail Services to lift the end of the cars so the wheel sets can be rolled out and new ones rolled into place. We will also be assessing the polycarbonate windows and some will have to be replaced. It would be nice if we could go back to glass. Not only is it cheaper than polycarbonate, which is an oil-based product, but it lasts longer and is easier to clean. Even when well cared for, polycarbonate breaks down and discolors when exposed to sunlight over a number of years. Our fear is that if the vandals discover one glass window, they would quickly break them all and then it would be a major problem that would take the cars out of service for a long time, because changing the windows is a labor intensive project. The parlor car completed another highly successful tour in Ohio. I want to thank all the members of the Car Department, especially Al Olmstead, that staffed the car for these trips. While it is fun to ride the parlor car on rails that we don’t see regularly, it is also a tiring weekend. It usually means leaving the Buffalo area after work on Friday afternoon, driving five to five and a half hours, getting to bed late and getting up early to be at the train to get it ready for the trip. The day of the trip is usually long, so it’s another night in a motel and a drive back to Buffalo on Sunday. |
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A near sell-out crowd of passengers await the Santa train, led by GVT Falls Road Alco RS11 #1802, at the Medina Museum. Society member and Genesee Valley Transportation employee Mike Fitzsimmons, conductor on this train, is seen on the steps of the engine. Note the N Y Central E-8 on the left of the photo. | ) |
| 3/2009 As with our other projects, this is a quiet time for the Car Department. It is difficult to do much in the winter, especially a winter that has been this cold and snowy. Most of the work has been limited to getting up to Medina every couple of weeks to run the diesel generators and charge the batteries in coach 2933. We did remove a faulty hand brake so that parts could be ordered and the hand brake repaired before the excursion season begins in May. The big news, of course, is the possibility of getting the parlor car brought up to Amtrak standards so that it can be run in excursion service on Class I railroads. Gathering the necessary information to get this project going has been a time consuming process. It meant getting the specifications out to several shops in order to find the best price and the best shop. It has meant tweaking the proposal to get the most for our money without sacrificing quality. This is a major undertaking that requires expensive truck work, electrical work and other mechanical upgrades, plus constant inspections by Amtrak, in order to ensure the car meets all of its standards. Then there comes the interior work of carpeting, upholstery, paint and on and on. What is for sure is that, once completed, this will be a high demand car that will bring top price in mainline excursion service. The coaches have a full season ahead that will start with Thomas the Tank Engine trips in May. Wine Trains are scheduled to begin in June and, all too soon, we’ll be talking about fall foliage trips and Santa trips. I can’t believe I actually said that. As always, I have to thank all the members of the Car Department for the time they spend. Not all of it is on the job getting dirty. A lot of hours are also spent tracking down information and parts. It all comes together in some of the finest excursion equipment around. |
| 5/2009 - "The Blue Flag" I have struggled, since I started writing about the Car Department, with finding a suitable name for this article. Nothing ever felt quite right. I tried a couple of things because I thought it needed a title. So, its new name is "THE BLUE FLAG." This has significance for the Car Department, and for working on equipment when it is on a live railroad. For those of you who might not know what a blue flag means, here is a brief explanation. A blue flag is exactly that, a blue flag made of metal that attaches to the rail or the car. It is a safety device. Federal law prohibits an engine crew from passing a blue flag to couple onto a cut of cars. It also prohibits a crew from pushing a cut of cars against a car or cars that are blue flagged. The flag indicates that people are working on, under or between the cars. Obviously, it would be very dangerous to couple to a car in that situation. The blue flag is set out before anyone starts working and is taken down when everyone is known to be clear. By law, only the person that puts out the flag can remove it. Railroaders, railroads and the government take safety very seriously, and the blue flag is just one of many rules intended to keep people safe. Cars and locomotives are heavy pieces of equipment that can do a lot of damage to the relatively frail human body. Even though we are not a railroad, we are bound by the laws that govern railroads and railroading. That is the reason why we have brake valves on the cars rebuilt every two years, regardless of how many miles the cars travel. It’s why our equipment is inspected every year by someone from the FRA. It’s why windows have to meet certain specifications. The list goes on and on. But the bottom line is safety. We are concerned about the safety of people working on the equipment. We are concerned about the safety of the train crews that work around the equipment. We are concerned about the safety of the passengers and crews aboard the train during trips. Maintaining the cars in a safe and acceptable condition is an expensive but necessary part of what we do. There are no shortcuts. Even though you are reading this in May, it is going to the editor at the beginning of April. That means that we are just getting into the work season. Besides the normal maintenance that we have done on the coaches, we will have two big projects for the Department. One, as has been mentioned before, will be the work needed to upgrade the parlor car to Amtrak standards. While much of that work will be contracted out, there will be a number of things we will be doing ourselves, or, at the very least, overseeing. I should mention that a final decision has not been decided as to what will be done where, or by whom the work will be done, it is very exciting to have a car like the Francis McGrath up to Amtrak standards. On April 11th, the blue flag was put out as a team of car knockers (repairmen) descended on the passenger cars in Medina to prepare them for the expected inspection by the FRA inspector prior to the upcoming excursion season. The team checked for loose grab irons, pedestal keys (devices that keep the wheel sets from coming out of the bottom of the truck assembly should it lift off the rail) angle cock hangers and whatever else that might be loose. The angle cocks were tested to see that they worked properly, as were the various airline cutout cocks, such as the valve that cuts out the entire car’s brake system and those that cut each truck out of the system. Joe Kocsis gauged all of the wheels to be sure they were within legal limits, which they were. This means crawling around to put gauges on various part of each wheel to test the thickness of the tread as well as the contour of the wheel and the thickness and depth of the flange. One wheel set is close to the end of its acceptable wear and will probably be changes out this summer. The crew also replaced all of the moving parts in one coupler. When a crewman lifts the cut lever, the coupler is supposed to swing open. This coupler would not open. It closed, locked and was safe, but it did not open properly. The worst parts of this job are getting the bolts out of the brackets that support the cut lever and then hoisting the new knuckle into place. It’s a fairly hefty piece of steel. It still wasn’t perfect, but there are a few things that can be tweaked, and you will probably read about that a bit later in this article. On Tuesday, April 28th, the local FRA inspector made his annual inspection of the coaches. I am very proud to say that he was very pleased with the condition of the equipment.. This reflects directly on the dedication of the members of the Car Department. He did find some minor problems that were easily fixed, and he did find some other things that we will have to keep an eye on, but are fine for now. The inspector’s job is to ensure that the equipment meets all applicable safety standards for the sake of the railroad crew and our passengers. I should also point out that he has been very helpful in passing along information that assists us in maintaining the equipment. The other project is the upgrades on the coaches that will be completed with the money from a New York State grant. After three years, we have received the first payment from the State that will allow us to replace the windows in coach 2933, reupholster coach 2932 and hopefully get the two coaches up and running with air conditioning. I want to thank Tom Stackhouse for the hours of work that he put in handling this grant. I also want to thank Jim Dickinson from the Medina Railroad Museum for his support in getting us in to see Senator Maziarz who arranged for the grant. |
| 7/2009 - "The Blue Flag" It is quite likely that by the time you read this, the parlor car will be back in Buffalo after spending a couple of years doing excursions for a group in Orrville, Ohio. They took very good care of the car while it was there, and this has been a wonderful working relationship. The riders that we have sent along for the trips have commented on how successful the trips have been, and how enjoyable they have been to ride. The car gets some relatively high speed running on these trips, usually when they are on the Wheeling and Lake Erie. |
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On Sunday, June 7th, the Car Department met in Lockport to ready the train for the first Wine Train. The plan had been to install 16 dyed arm rests and paint seat frames in coach 2906. Instead, the day was spent repairing a window that had been vandalized. Dave Fleenor, Al Olmstead and I spent approximately four hours on the job. The outer window, which was 0.25 inch polycarbonate, is very difficult to break. However, it had been broken with sufficient force to also break the inside piece of laminated glass. Materials came to more than $300. The pictures show window, the window assembly after removal from the car body, and the finished job. The windows measure more than five feet long and two feet tall. |
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| 9/2009 - "The Blue Flag" The Car department has been busy with the usual maintenance on the fleet and now will be getting the Society’s newest addition, an ex-Union Pacific lunch counter car built by American Car & Foundry in 1955, ready for service (thanks to Geno Dailey for the builder information). The car was purchased from member Roy Wullich and shipped to Western New York from Calgary, Alberta, via Canadian pacific. CSX took over in Buffalo and delivered it to the Falls Road in Lockport. Once again, we must thank the Falls Road and Genesee Valley Transportation for their support in finding a spot for the car. Joe Kocis, Al Olmstead and I toured the parlor car and started a list of things to do as we prepare the car to be brought up to Amtrak standards. Tom Stackhouse has color pictures of the original interior and they will be used to provide direction for the new interior. It is not our intention to make this a historical restoration, but we have decided to make it similar to the original. Judy Henn (yep, my wife) has years of experience as an interior decorator and she has agreed to oversee the selection of colors and materials for the interior work. Many thanks go out to both the organizations and the individuals who work with us from those organizations. After a long wait, we are starting the restoration of coach 2933, which was purchased from the Mohawk and Hudson Chapter of the NRHS a few years ago. All of the windows will be replaced with polycarbonate on the outside and laminated safety glass on the inside. This is a labor-intensive job, and anyone that would like to get involved is very welcome. The car is stored in Medina, so if you live to the north and have been thinking of getting out and being active in the Society’s restoration efforts, this would be a great project for you. Mike Dorofy has agreed to head up this particular project, and I am sure that he would appreciate any extra help he can get. Often we find that readily available tools do not meet the needs of making repairs to our equipment. One such problem is being solved by Dave Fleenor, who is designing a device to help us change brake head springs. Two heavy springs are held in place against the side of the brake shoe by a plate. When the springs get weak or break, the new springs are almost impossible to compress without a clamp of some sort. The problem is that most standard clamps will not fit around the brake head, so Dave is designing one. In August, he made a mock-up out of wood, but the final form will be of thick metal. We faced a similar problem when we purchased the windows for coach #2933. The laminated safety glass windows weigh about 40 pounds each and cost $120. To safely transport them, Art Toale designed and built cases to support the glass in an upright position. |
| 11/2009 - "The Blue Flag" The coaches have been very busy with all the wine trips and then running nearly every weekend in October between the fall foliage trips and the final wine trips of the season. After a brief break, the Santa trips start and they go until just before Christmas. That makes working on the cars difficult because the work has to scheduled around the trips. However, work continues to be done. The first sets of newly upholstered seats have been installed in coach 2906. Before that happened, a day was spent painting the seat frames. We have tried several combinations of colors for the seat frames over the years. Some are blue, some are gray and some are black. The frames in 2906 are satin black and that seems to be most people’s favorite. The black goes well with the color of the seats. Additionally, the aisles at the ends of coach 2906 were both painted. As of now, Coach 2906 has had nearly all of the seats recovered. The original seats were rotated through an upholstery schedule ten at a time. Each time ten recovered seats were installed, another ten were removed and sent out. The seat frames were repainted and the arm rests removed and dyed before being reinstalled.At the same tiome, the yearly required maintenance on the diesel generators was completed. The crew spent a very pleasant couple of hours working on the generator for coach 2941. This was done on that beautiful weekend in November when it was sunny and 65'. The job was to replace the low pressure pump in hopes that it would resolve an on-going and very difficult to resolve problem in which the diesel generator would become air bound and shut down. This problem defied even the mechanics from the manufacturer until they decided that the cause had to be the low pressure pump. The pump itself is small and the replacement would have been very easy if it were not for the fact that the pump is located behind one of the engine mounts. That meant that the unit had to be jacked up and blocked so that the mount could be removed to get at the pump. George Specht was the lead mechanic on the job and managed to get through it with a minimum of unpleasant language. At the same time, Dave Fleenor was working on one of the never ending projects, the need to repair window shades. Oh, By the way, the unit is working much better with the new pump. By the time you are reading this, the trips will have ended and the Car Department crew will probably completed the task of removing the brake valves for their bi-annual rebuilding. Hopefully, the winter will not be too harsh and the crew will be able to continue getting work done. The big project will be to start replacing the windows in coach 2933. In the mean time, work will continue on the parlor car and other equipment as needs are identified. I am hoping to continue working through the winter, except perhaps in the coldest weather. For one thing, we have reached that time when the brake valves have to be removed from the coaches and sent for rebuilding. We will also be continuing interior work on the parlor car and installing new windows in coach 2933. If anyone in the Car Department thought it would be an easy winter, they are wrong. Looking forward, we are looking at ways to fund the purchase and installation of a new diesel generator for the recently acquired lunch counter car. The next time we chat, it will be 2010 and the Car Department will be laying out its work for the upcoming season. Until then, have a great holiday season and thanks so much to everyone that comes in to work on the equipment and those that support the work with donations. |
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