Submitted by WD Miller.
Carson and I worked on 358, Friday evening, accomplished the following tasks.
Carson started by working under the short hood from the engineer’s side sweeping and clearing debris. About 3 shop vac loads of rust, dust, and dirt removed. While he was working on that, I worked on securing and taping off loose wire ends, by the recommendation of Jon Jaros, in preparation of “lighting up” the low voltage side once we get a set of batteries and/or a power supply unit to begin testing and troubleshooting any issues on the LV side of things. That process also included some photographing of labels, and also redoing some labels on wires that the original labels were fading on. I performed a visual check, and some places a physical palpation of wires and connections to ensure that they were intact and insulated.
Two things that came up from this inspection, 1. There are several wires that seemingly went to “something” that has been removed, the question is; Is that “something” important/needed, or was it removed by NS because it was obsolete? I’ll get with Chris and Jon on that and see what the answer might be. 2. There are many terminal connections that are rusted over, for the best and trouble free revival of 358, I believe I may be spending some time cleaning and rust proofing these connections, especially on the ones that I know we’ll be using. Rust and voltage don’t always get along, and in some cases makes for pretty blue/orangey sparks, and that “funny smell”.
We wrapped up the night after a quick sandwich break, by tackling the area behind the electrical cabinet on the engineers side. This is where the air dryer hung previously, and where the traction motor cables leave the cabinet area. We had two shop vacs going, to work this one small area. The pictures included don’t do justice as to just how deep the dust, rust and dirt really was. I measured 5 inches deep in one spot. This area now will need to be needled, as there is a packed layer of gunk that needs to be busted out and swept up. Just from this small 2 foot by about 4 foot area, we hauled out at least 6 shop vac loads, and one 5-gallon bucket of larger stuff. Pretty deep, to say the least. This clean out would not have been possible with the engine outside, being inside the last several weeks, things have really dried out nicely again. Makes work much more productive and “pleasant”. Although towards the bottom of this 5 inches did find some wet stuff yet, but that deep…doesn’t surprise me.
If all goes as planned we’ll be back on Friday, Oct. 6th. to needle that one area, and continue to sweep in the engine compartment area (and on top of the prime mover), plus maybe some other carbody work. Saturday Oct. 21 (big group work day), Chris is working on a list of “to-dos” for that day, hope to get a decent sized group there to accomplish much.
