Night at the Museum video.

Ray is positioning freight cars for the night photo shoot. There are some photos on the Fairmount A6 Blog.

Adjust Plymouth brakes

The Plymouth does not have air brakes, it has a hand brake operated by a hand wheel at the engineers right side. The brakes were never that great since we have been operating it. I noticed that when the hand brake was tight the shoes on the left side of the engine were not contacting the wheels. I checked with Steve and decided to adjust the left side brake. My first thought was to make the shoes reach farther, lengthen the adjuster link. The threads on the link were rusty and painted. I cleaned up the threads, reinserted the link and adjusted it. I soon saw the adjuster needed to be shortened. It works better now

More pictures of the volunteers who helped get the Whitcomb running.

I have lots of pictures and videos of the Whitcomb on the blog. I decided to put up some pictures of the people who worked on the Whitcomb. My friend Hank helped me work on the Whitcomb for 3 or 4 years. We drove from the Cleveland area to the museum and worked on the Whitcomb on day 1. We would stay overnight at my place near Findley lake. We would work at the museum another day and come home that night.

In November I replaced the ignition switch with a heavy duty one. I unwound the chain on the hand brake and straightened it out and wound it up again. The president of the museum feels that the Plymouth brakes should be more effective. I checked the level of the diesel fuel in the tank. It hardly registered on a rod that I lowered into the tank. I got a diesel can and put almost 10 gallons in the tank. The museum plans to add diesel when they fill the other equipment.

I went to the museum in October and got the starter Steve dropped off. The nose casting was oriented 180 degrees different from the Plymouth starter. I took it home and took the nose casting off and turned it 180 degrees and reattached it. I took the starter back to the museum and installed it in the engine. The train started fine. Because the old starter had gotten so hot I decided to check to see if there was some voltage applied to the starter motor after it was started. Sure enough the ignition switch was messed up and putting 12 volts on the starter even after the key switch was turned back to run. I put a disconnect switch in the line to the starter motor and that was a work around.

During August and September Steve and I have worked on the Plymouth. Steve bought a bell and he and I made a bracket and mounted it on the hood. We painted the inside of the cab. We made an appointment to run the Plymouth with the new batteries and rebuilt alternator. We made a few runs up and down the track when we smelled something burning. The starter solenoid and starter were smoking and too hot to touch. What caused this and what damage was done, we don’t know yet. Steve has another starter to try on the engine.