I've done some shopping in between working on the museum's ambitious winter projects. The big find was enough plastic lenses to equip all of the 18" ceiling light fixtures. I also found brackets for a right-side cut lever for one end.
Adlake's owner and a sales rep were there. I was glad to hear that the new ownership wants to work with museums and car owners. Rather than requiring a minimum order, they will sell single units. They also offer a refurbish/rebuild service for existing hardware. I'm also told their website now has a password-protected members section. Members may order repair parts like springs directly from Adlake. Their foundry is intact and they are willing to cast the occasional repair part if needed - their sales rep told me they have a lot of the old patterns in a (my guess) 200 sq. ft. pattern room. They also have a good fabric curtain business. On the unfortunate side, previous owners sold the aluminum window sash business and razed the buildings. They've contemplated trying to re-enter that business. Let's wish them luck.
Gateway Rail Services, Inc. was there. They purchased the assets of the former Illinois Transit Assembly Corp near St Louis. Of most interest to me, they replicated the aluminum extrusion needed to make "Adlake" window sash.
UTC RAS Rail Systems Group had a booth. They are an AAR M-1003 / ISO 9002 wheel, bearing, truck and transmission shop. To me, they're a new vendor.
During our tour of Amtrak's Beech Grove shop they indicated that their services are now available to car owners. Beech Grove is, of course, a full-service shop.
Ozark Rail Logistics / Batavia and Ohio Railway Services were there. I picked up their brochures and added them to the "see also" section.
AcoustiBlok sent samples of their 1/8" closed-cell rubber acoustical insulation.
Delval Rail Car had a booth. Another new vendor (to me,) they offer many of the engineering, heavy work, and Amtrak compliance services I could use right now. I was not able to talk to them.
| The museum's continual rotation of equipment through the shop produced this stunning view in February. The two nicest GN paint jobs are Dupont Imron. The remainder are varying lesser paints. |
| Here's another take on that beautiful five-car train. |
| Steel repairs and touch-up on NP 1102 took two solid months of several volunteer's time. I led the project. The paint is purposefully low-quality, so that it will fade to (almost) match the rest of the car. The "rivets" are Allen-head screws secured with Lock-tite and filled with Bondo. That is appropriate, since the NP re-skinned "Reba" shortly after World War II and used a lot of screws. |
Last weekend a little incident got me thinking. I had a three-axle truck half-suspended in the air while two helpers on the ground put wood blocking under it. I noticed one helper - a young newbie - running to be in the right position. That bothered me so I asked him to slow down. Mulling it over, a lesson I have learned is: "Don't hurry it. Hurry is when stupid happens." Whether I'm machining, welding, or doing layout, I do my best work when I'm relaxed. If I'm pushing too fast, or stressed, or had too much coffee - that's when it helps to slow down, take a breath, relax, and focus.
I received word from Starfire that the side sill engineering is in progress. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it.
In March I was occupied with a wheel set replacement for the museum.
 | We paid a house mover, Semple Building Movers, to do the lift and roll-out. Owner Terry Semple has a lot of experience moving rail cars and some neat equipment. For example, he use a gasoline-powered SPX PowerTeam pump for this lift, with independent controls for eight hydraulic jacks. Note his blocking: Warp-free 6" x 6" x 4' pine with the end grain sealed. |
 | The museum's car has plastic center plate liners. Here it is before I cleaned it up. This should be sufficient lubrication but I added powdered graphite anyway. |
 | Here's the freshly-turned profile on the replacement wheel set. It has a "Narrow Flange" and a 1-in-20 tread taper. |
 | Info cast into the bottom of the Amtrak AP-EE 5.5"x10" roller bearing adapter box. This just slides over the bearing cartridge. Timken designed these for Amtrak to retrofit cars with enclosed roller bearings. |
 | Info cast into the cap of the Timken AP-EE 5.5"x10" roller bearing. The AP-EE bearings were custom designed for Amtrak to allow extra space for grease in an otherwise-standard bearing cartridge. |
 | By contrast, here's a pre-Amtrak Timken enclosed roller bearing. The bolt-on cover meant only one rotating seal was needed. |
 | We found a broken spring, which offered the opportunity to show the three nested coils. Notice the center coil is wound the opposite direction, so that it is not possible for inner and outer coils to mesh and become a solid block. |
 | Springs are typically stamped on each end. "B" doesn't ring a bell. "771" is the part number for the outer coil. (The middle coil was 772 and the inner 773.) ASF is the manufacturer, and 5 53 probably the date of manufacture. Every broken coil I've ever seen has broken near the end, typically in the pocket where the break cannot be seen. |
 | The museum needed more Roller Bearing grease. For everyone's info, Mobile Arapen RB 320 meets the AAR's M-942 specification for roller bearing grease. 35 lbs. equals a five-gallon pail. |
1146 is inside the shop until October. Since the side sill engineering was in-progress, I decided to start working on Body End Sill replacement.
 | A first task was removing the stainless cap over the draft gear pocket in the end casting. There was a pile of rust built up underneath which needed removing. My purpose was to make a flat surface for temporary side sill support structure. |
Starfire shipped the side sill drawings on May 5th. Look near the bottom under "Side Sill Structural"
I took a week of vacation in May to work on 1146, and hired Matt Arnold to help. The pictures follow:
 | The reason for removing the stainless cap was installation of temporary bracing, to keep the side sills from wandering off while I replace the end sills. Note the shim needed to make sure the brace is bearing on the end casting. |
 | The stainless cap covered openings in the draft gear pocket area of the end casting, which stretches from the body bolster to the coupler pocket. |
 | I lowered the camera through the middle opening in the end casting and photographed the truck's locking center pin. Look at that huge pile of dirt. |
 | Looking the opposite direction, in the foreground is the yoke around the draft gear. Farther way is one of the many pivots in the drawbar. |
 | This view is down and angled toward the coupler. We are looking at the butt end of the yoke around the draft gear. The draft gear itself is layers of steel and rubber, with thick steel blocks at the ends. The end axle is visible through the bottom opening. |
 | Looking down at the rubber-and-steel draft gear pack. The yoke is in the foreground and the rest is end casting. |
 | I spied this in a woodworker's store in West Des Moines. It's a precision T-Square with a very wide foot (left, vertical in picture) and closely-spaced holes for a pencil. It looks to me like a quick way to scribe a straight line precisely aligned with the bottom of the side sheet - useful for side sill replacement, since the replacement sheet would not have to be fitted for a consistently-spaced joint. |
 | Another option in the same store. This one should go faster, but may be less accurate. |
 | Here's the tech info on the next spool of welding wire, which I just installed. |
 | Mike welds in the temporary side sill brace. Yes, it has a very deep cross-section. Overkill? Probably. It was lying around without a purpose... |
 | I used four welds on each end of the brace. Enough to hold it, but easily cut with a 4.5" cut-off wheel and snapped off for quick removal. |
 | I learned this trick from Matt Arnold: Cut the rivet heads with a cut-off wheel and finish grinding with a 1/4" wheel. It's much faster than grinding the entire head to dust. Two grinders makes it even faster. |
 | The Rivet Buster made quick work of the rivets. The body end sill is a W-shaped 1/4" piece and an L-channel. I only need to replace the former. |
 | I'll need to retain the hole in the end sill for the pipe to the Conductor's emergency brake valve. |
 | Sometimes the 4.5" grinder cut-off wheel snags, and then the nut is so tight the spanner wrench bends and/or the stop pin in the aluminum head is damaged. The solution is to break off as much of the wheel as possible with a Vise Grip, and then use a box wrench and a slip-jaw pliers to loosen it. |
 | One last look at the vestibule door hinges which did not come off easily. The upper pair on each side came nicely, the lower did not. Some of these will be destroyed in removal. I have new ones, but they don't have the decorative balls top and bottom. |
 | Here's the BL corner of the body after hinge removal. I was able to remove the screws with a Vise Grip. Note the layers above the hinge: Body End Sheet, Corner Post (outer section) with offset to clear the body end sheet, and extruded aluminum door trim. The mess below is part of the GN fixed step modification. Part of the end sill is already gone. |
 | Now the aluminum trim is off. Note the shim which ACF installed under the trim at the bottom only. Presumably the door posts were not parallel so they adjusted. My reason for notching the body end sill is clear: Access to remove rivet heads on the body end post. |
 | Part of the side sheet and part of the outer section of the body corner are removed. The middle section of the body corner is visible (with the rust perforation in it) as is the inner section (the fabricated U-channel at the right.) The middle is a modified side wall post, and the inner a modified end wall post. |
 | Another view of the body BL corner. One can see how the end sill fits into the side sill Z-channel, and how the corner post sits on the side sill only. The skirt end piece is attached only to the end sill. At top, what looks like a buck-toothed gap is actually body end sheet (right) and a tapping plate for door trim screws (left). |
 | As Matt removed the side sheet, he noticed the bottom edge of the sheet did not follow the side sill Z-channel. The Z-channel loops up over the bolster. |
 | We put my twenty-foot cold-rolled straight edge along the side sill to illustrate it's not so straight-and-true nature. We also decided to jack this corner just a hair - working against another jack on the body BR corner. |
 | Same subject, different camera angle. Matt did more measuring later and determined the side sill Z-channel loops over both bolsters and sags in the middle and at the ends. |
 | The body BR end sill has been removed. Note the corner is supported by a jack in addition to the temporary beam bridging the two side sills. There is another jack on the body BR corner. |
 | Without the end sill, the BL end of the side sill is more plainly seen. I left the support/closure for the outer end of the end sill, as well as the inner C-channel which the splash pan is welded to. |
 | Opposite, here is the support/closure for the inner end of the end sill, which ACF welded to the end casting. |
 | ACF drawing 4675130 dimensions the body end sills. I had Linder's Specialty fabricate them according to the drawing, and I cut the BL sill according to the drawing. It fit perfectly. The track jack is for shoving the end post out of the way. |
 | The new end sill is clamped in and ready to tack. It looked a little crooked, but measuring off the ceiling (there is a major beam across the width) showed that it was right or even 1/16th high at the outer end. Considering the jack pushing up, I thought that was OK. |
 | The new end sill was welded to the center casting using the same procedure as the hand brake chain sheave below it: Locally heat the casting to at least 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and keep it above that temperature while welding. Then needle-scale the weld while hot for some measure of stress relief. |
 | Detail of the end sill weld to the side sill. Yes, overhead is more difficult to make look nice. |
 | Here's a detail of the end sill weld to the outer support. The dark spots in the weld are where it was tacked. The odd piece at right is merely to fill a gap. |
 | Same area, on the underside. |
 | Detail of the underside weld to the inboard support. |
 | Detail of the underside weld to the end casting. This was a difficult position, as I was inside the truck leaning over its end transom. |
 | Meanwhile, Matt had completed the 4" discovery pass of the side sheet removal, marked it up with the 12" cut line and positions of all the vertical sheet stiffener angles, and begun sheet removal. This is the beginning of the side sill replacement. |
 | After welding the body end wall post on, I attached the new inner section of the door post. Both leave about a 1/4" gap at the bottom and do not touch the flat of the end sill. The outer section of the door post will go on after the end sheet. |
 | Matt quickly settled on this technique: First he cut along the 12" mark with a cut-off wheel in a 4 1/2" angle grinder. Between the verticals he cut through, but at the verticals he did not, to avoid nicking them. Then he cut midway between with a plasma cutting torch. (Miller Spectrum Extreme 375 - small but gutsy.) In the opened-up coach section we used a steel spark shield to control the hot spray. |
 | The body end sheet needs tapping plates for the end platform and the trap door hinge. I had extra material from the end platform sides so used it. All the clamps and bars are to align it before welding. |
 | Matt has pretty much finished opening up the left side in the coach area. |
 | The rest of Matt's technique was using a heavy hammer to drive a chisel between the vertical and the side sheet, breaking the welds without deforming the vertical channel. |
 | Here's the extreme rust on the right side sill, where the side sheet had perforated under the dining room windows. |
 | Matt had never seen an ACF Cor-Ten side sill this bad, so he wanted me to document the exterior evidence. One tell-tale was that the spot welds along the bottom edge had been ripped apart by the build-up of rust. |
 | Another tell-tale was that rust between the side sheet and the verticals & bottom edge had consistently bent the bottom edge of the side sheet. |
 | This is stunning: A 1/4" angle and a 3/8" zee produced almost a 2" pile of rust. (Not long after taking this photo, we all had great fun pulling out huge chunks.) |
 | Cross-section of the right-side door post, showing the tapping plate in the hinge area. Overall it's a little warped from being pounded off, and part of the cross-section is missing at the upper right. |
 | I've just removed the right-side door post. I thought it would look better if the cuts were symmetrical, but the left cut fell right in the hinge so I went higher. The left will have to be adjusted. Interesting details to notice are the the footprints of the end platform and of the trap door hinge, the square opening for the trap door light switch, and the horizontal weld line where the GN patched the body end while changing from roll-up steps to fixed. |
 | The end sheet is gone - removed in pieces with a cut-off wheel - and the horizontal angles on the end sill have been cut with the plasma cutting torch. I don't find the angles on the ACF diagrams, so I assume they're part of the GN's step modifications. I kept one rivet from the door post for matching the look with pan-head screws or Huck bolts or other fasteners. |
 | Angles and trap door hinge tapping plate removed. I've also opened a window for access to cut wall post rivet heads off with the cut-off wheel. Remains of the roll-up step's pivot bracing are visible through the window. |
 | This is how it looked at the end of my work week. Another week is planned for July. |
One slight change in plans: Rather than replacing the left side sill this year and the right next year, Matt and I decided it would be better to prep both this year and replace both next year. That decision is driven by the need to jack the entire car into alignment. By doing both at once, it is only necessary to align everything once.
I have met several people who worked in the dining cars of both the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, but in May I had the great fortune of interviewing someone who actually worked in my car. Click here to read a transcript.
Here is an abrasive selection chart for blast media which I found at a local supplier. I like that it shows the surface finish produced in mils, which is how paint vendors write their specs, and that it gives tips on what purpose each media is suited for.
Another random find: A chart of brake cylinder pressures in full service and emergency at different locomotive feed valve settings. This assumes the 2.5:1 ratio on a freight car with perfect piston travel, but is also great for passenger cars with dummy volumes instead of a single body-mounted brake cylinder, and a relay valve to drive the brake cylinder(s) according to the resulting reference pressure. This is pure gold when converting a passenger car to a newer style of brake valves, both for design and for testing afterwards. It stops at 90 psi, but one should be able to extrapolate to Amtrak's 110 psi trainline.
In July I was able to take another week to work on 1146, and again Matt Arnold was available to help.
 | I asked Matt to continue removing the bottom twelve inches of exterior skin, so that everything could be opened for inspection. Here is what he found in kitchen area. Note the insulation had fallen, and there is no interior wall finish under the cabinets. |
 | Matt ended up breaking most of the welds. (Body post on left, sheet stiffener on right.) Interestingly the bottom weld on the post had broken long ago. |
 | Peeking under the kitchen cabinets. I think the wrapped pipe might be steam to the coffee pot, and that's a drain pipe in the corner. |
 | The floor is a mess underneath the cabinets. |
 | Here is what's left of the kitchen side door threshold. The pipe sticking up was a drain for the drain trough. This is responsible for a large part of the kitchen floor damage, since rain water ran down the door and into under the floor. |
 | Kitchen side door threshold from the other angle. |
 | While Matt was opening the side sill, I removed the BR corner body end sill. The corner post is a fabricated Z channel welded to a fabricated U channel. |
 | Here's the corner post from the inside. I'm not sure the end of the side sill Z channel was cut at an angle. Only the main end sill piece was replaced. The U-channel rivet to it and the end support were both kept. Note the remnant of the floor joist weld on the inside of the corner post. |
 | Matt got the left side sill completely opened mid-week. The black-and-white appearance of the insulation is black spray-on rustproofing ("dednox") sticking better to the white asbestos than the steel. |
 | I decided to blast all the new steel before priming it. Here's the start of the blasting enclosure. |
 | At the Executive Director's request, I put together an interpretive sign for museum visitors. |
 | The new body end sill has been welded in. The bent piece of steel lying nearby is the inside section of the end door post - used for alignment. |
 | First pass welding the body end sill to the end casting. Again, I followed the engineer's instructions to preheat locally and maintain above 150 degrees fahrenheit while welding. |
 | The intermediate post in the body end wall was welded to the body end sill. I put plug welds where the rivets were and welded all around to keep moisture out. |
 | Body end sill welded to the side sill. |
 | Not my best weld. This joins the end sill to the side support/end closure. |
 | Overhead welds in a tight corner are more difficult. This joins the body end sill to the end casting. |
 | Here's the underside of the outside corner weld. (Part of this joint was not welded, in case the side sill web needs replacement.) |
 | In the coach section, where the asbestos had already been removed, Matt cut through between posts and stiffeners and cut close directly over. The locations were determined by the first cut at four inches. |
 | The new BR body end sill installation is complete. |
 | Matt brought along a nifty Makita 9566CV cut-off tool. It uses a six-inch wheel for longer disc life at little extra cost, and the wheel guard is closed on both sides for added safety. |
 | Matt likes it because the fully-enclosed guard gives him another place to hold on, and it's as small and light as a 4 1/2-inch grinder. |
 | Where there was still asbestos-faced mineral wool insulation, we decided to make the vertical cuts with a plasma cutter. The heat melts the asbestos into glass-like solid balls but it doesn't become airborne. The smoke is from the spray-on rust-proofing. The insulation stops the torch and doesn't burn - but we used the water spray bottle liberally anyway, and had a garden hose ready just in case. |
 | Once the sheet metal was removed, we hung a temporary containment barrier. |
 | After concealed surfaces were grit-blasted and painted with POR-15 rust-preventive paint, the BL body end sheet was welded on with plug welds (centered between rivet and bolt holes) and the top and the butt joint with the original sheet welded. |
 | Creative use of a pipe clamp allowed me to have the sheet tight before each plug weld. |
I stumbled across an alert in Tools of the Trade's Industry News newsletter that a new EPA rule is making lead paint more difficult. A little investigating led me to the EPA website on lead. I haven't fully investigated - thankfully 1146 had been sandblasted and primed before I bought it.
In August, a friend and I had a few nights and weekends to do sand blasting.
 | The blasting tent was made of fiber-reinforced two-ply plastic "Dura-Skrim" sheeting from Menards. At the top I hung it by nailing through plaster lathe into 2x4's. The edges were joined by folding a seam and sewing 16-penny nails through every six inches. |
 | To keep from making a mess in the shop, the blasting enclosure needed to have a lower air pressure to draw air in rather than letting dirt out. I bought four 25-foot sections of twelve-inch spiral plastic ducting, and found that Menards sells tube in three nominal 12-inch sizes. I bought the smallest and cut it into quarters. |
 | Here's a finished coupling. I joined two six-inch hose clamps end-to-end to make a 12-inch clamp, and used two to secure the spiral ducting to the concrete forming tube. They did not leak. |
 | The museum's exhaust blower is military-surplus. It was made for cooling the brakes on airplanes. |
 | The end of the car was sealed off from inside. I also removed the brake hose and plugged the openings with pipe plugs, and removed the coupler's innards and stuffed rags into the shank. |
 | I've found that paints - especially POR-15 - do not stick to new steel with mill scale and oils still on the surface. Blasting is one way to prepare the surface, although it is very labor-intensive. The makers of PRO-15 also make a chemical cleaner called Metal-Ready which is faster, but I suspect not quite as effective. (Not scientifically verified!) |
 | The BL vestibule end sheet being prepared. |
Discussion on the Yahoo! Passenger Car List newsgroup on August 16th and 17th led me to photographs of the Great Northern's "International" in the City of Vancouver Archives. In the photos was Great Northern's Pendulum car 999. It was an interesting diversion. 999 was almost an experimental prototype - almost a sales sample - which never took off. The May 20th, 1940 issue of Life magazine reveals that Cortland Hill, grandson of James J. Hill, was a backer of the development effort. It ran frequently in the International with 1146.
Another set of records in the City of Vancouver Archives documents the abandonment of the Great Northern's passenger station in 1962. This was 1146's northern port of call.
Searching for parts for the museum's caboose CB&Q 13500, I discovered this vendor: Comet Industries, Inc. Their parts catalog intested me most, but they have other products and services such as AEI tag programming. Some of the parts turned out to be used (side bearings) but they worked.
 | For reference, I took some pictures of MTM's 1213, whose vestibule is identical to 1146's in blue print, construction, and later modification. |
 | I decided to experiment with steel grit blasting. The basic idea was that a magnet would easily pick up used media, allowing me to recover more for reuse. I bought 750 lbs. Note to self: 25 grit is a bit too big. (Word of warning: I read somewhere that steel and aluminum dust make an explosive mixture.) |
 | The body end sheet has been welded on, and the end platform is being roughed in to locate the door threshold. After bouncing several ideas around, Matt Arnold suggested the ceiling might be the most accurate, unchanged reference point. With two people, the platform sides were made planar relative to the ceiling. |
 | The door threshold is two angles sandwiching the end sheet. I followed the ACF drawings, except I welded all around rather than hot riveting. The sheet was cut 1/8 inch low, to "V" the groove for welding the top. The pen marks on either side locate the platform side channels and their mounting brackets (already welded on.) With this half of the door threshold on and aligning the sheet, I welded the sheet to the end casting to keep water out. (Approved by the engineer, and again all welds done above 150 degrees Fahrenheit and peened with a needle-scaler while still hot.) |
 | Parallel with the door, matching surfaces on the BL vestibule end sheet were painted with POR-15 rust-preventive paint. Having been sandblasted, I've no worries about adhesion. |
 | The body end sheet was welded to the casting on both sides (hot, then peened) to keep water out. This picture is just before welding the inside angle in. It is sitting off to the right. It was aligned, welded all around, and the inside of the cavity painted with POR-15. Note also that pilot holes have been drilled in the body end sills where the hot rivets once were. |
 | In this picture, the threshold inside angle has been welded all around and POR-15 applied both sides. The platform side rails were located again and mounting holes drilled. Finally, the angle inside the door will form the inside/top of the threshold. The tab fits down between the body end sills. |
 | This sample is "not bad" rust from the outside of the right door post. I sandblasted it for visibility. This was originally three 1/8 inch pieces riveted together. The rust pushed them apart. |
Andy;
Question for you: I am rebuilding the door threshold from the vestibule platform into the car. I'm working according to the original blueprints, except that I'm welding rather than riveting. I would like to weld all around, to seal out water, but am questioning whether that will weaken the end casting.
This drawing is useful: http://www.erixrailcar.com/history/ACF_Blueprints/6674939.pdf
Here's a detail from that drawing. The red arrows show where I propose continuous welds across the top of the casting to seal out water. (This drawing makes it look like there were welds originally, but so little of the .090" L.A.H.T. was left that I cannot tell.) I would, as you recommended last year, preheat the casting above 150 degrees f.
Would you be able to give your opinion by the end of the week? I'm working against a deadline.
Eric
Eric:
I see no problem with seal welding as you propose, with the indicated preheat, as the weld locations are outboard of the draft lugs and are therefore in a lower stress location on the casting. Along with preheat, be careful to properly terminate the welds, and form the beads uniformly, avoiding cratering.
Andrew J. Spurlock, P.E.
The Streamliner Memories website posted two interesting articles, one on the Steamlined Internationals, and one on the very unusual Pendulum car which called the Seattle-based trains home.
For my third and last week of vacation working on 1146, Mom and Dad came up to help.
 | The cavity has been stuffed with fiberglass insulation and the inside threshold piece welded in. |
 | When not helping me, Dad and Mom worked on scraping off the original spray-on undercoating, which has largely separated from the steel. I plan to replace it with POR-15. Note the cardboard over the restroom window - it was put there to prevent damage from stray sandblasting grit. The collision post work in the background is the 1/8 inch face doubler specified by the engineer - leftover work from last year. |
 | Dad found U S Steel markings on the body end wall Z channel. |
 | Both door posts are now on. We put plug welds between the rivet locations, and Dad is now drilling for faux rivets (carriage bolts.) After drilling we filed the holes square, put nuts on the back, and tack-welded the nuts. Note both posts are now cut at the same height. If the joints are visible, I want things to at least look symmetrical. |
 | End caps were welded on the door threshold ends, completely sealing the inside against water. I added this to prevent it from completely rusting away again. |
 | Door post detail: We welded the hidden edge of the door post, and even notched the edge (half plug welds) for extra strength. The weld on the face was over-ground. It got fixed later with epoxy. |
 | Faux rivets are going in. Being carriage bolts they have some structural value, but they are 5/16 rather than 3/8 and do not fill the hole or clamp like hot rivets - thus the plug welds between. |
 | Dad is drilling square holes. Note the alternating plug welds and faux rivets in the foreground. |
 | You can try to get close, but it seems there's always a slight mismatch. (A member of the Metal Smiths Guild showed me a trick for welding a square corner on an edge: Clamp a block of copper against the edge as a mold. The weld doesn't fuse to it.) |
 | I used Evercoat Metal-2-Metal metal-reinforced epoxy "Bondo" to hide irregularities. The shop air temperature was around sixty degrees, and I found I had to bake it with a heat gun to make it cure on my schedule. |
 | Dad ended the week cutting green-treat lumber to block the side sill openings in the coach section. The plywood is wedged between the side sill and the chair rail, and the 2x4's are between chair rail and skin, and it's all screwed together from inside. |
 | The platform is being reconstructed according to the original ACF drawings. One goof: I forgot the 1/16 inch for the cover over the buffer spring pocket. Some adjustment will be necessary next year. Everything was painted with POR-15 before assembly. The platform side mounts have been upgraded to three bolts, and temporary bolts in the body end sills. |
 | Nick (from London!) came to help work on my "Carriage". He got the last of the aluminum door trim removed. |
 | The BL vestibule end sheet has been hung for locating the stiffener and drilling rivet holes, while the POR-15 dries on the BR side. Mom got a picture of me in a lawn chair on my new end platform. |
 | Last year I clamped the new stiffeners to the old to match-drill the holes. Now the holes are being transferred to the end sheet. After all the holes were drilled, it was loosened again to let the chips fall out. Mating surfaces already have POR-15, but the stiffener will come off once more because one permanent fastener is behind the stiffener at the top. Also, the collision post face doubler edge welding and grinding in finished on this side. |
 | I pushed to get the BL corner as finished as possible, so that I could apply the permanent primer. This is more of the Evercoat Metal-2-Metal on both sides of the corner. Surfaces not ready to finish I just sprayed with mineral red Rust-Oleum primer. |
 | Someone - I forget who - gave me the idea of smoothing the pin-tail breaks on the Huck bolts, to remove the sharp edge where paint chipping could start. |
 | I ran out of time, so the BR corner was not ready for finish priming. Matching surfaces have POR-15 though so the end sheet does not have to come off again. Both stiffeners are completely drilled. |
 | Final finish before painting included welding several abandoned holes shut and a mounting plate for the safety bar hardware. |
The BL corner was sprayed with Shale Grey DuPont Corlar 2.1ST. All other raw steel got the mineral red Rust-Oleum.
Here is where the original home of 1146's electrical cabinet ended up: The Aberdeen, Carolina & Western. Look for SP 100 "Airslie".
I didn't get pictures: After mounting the hand brake support plate for the last time, I caulked around the edge with 3M Automotive Seam Sealant to prevent rust between it, the collision post, and the end sheet.
 | The asbestos abatement firm was creative in saving me money: It is cheaper to abate outside than inside a building. |
 | The coach section had been abated from inside. They pulled out as much as they could reach from the kitchen and dining room sections. |
Once the insulation was out, I got my first really good look at the side sills. To document, I started at vestibule opposite the hand brake and went around the entire car taking pictures as I went, ending at the hand brake. Click here to see the entire sequence.
