WW&F Railcar No. 4 (RC4) - Official Work Thread

[Stewart "Start" Rhine]

Dale,  I think there's a period clothing place in Augusta.  It may be called Timely Fashions or something like that.  Someone on the forum may know more.

Ira,  The Galloping Goose rides sound great. Gotta do that some time.  Was Goose #1 there?  Number 1 is like the WW&F's Model T in that it is new, built to resemble the original.  IIRC a number of RGS historians searched for an old Buick like the one that the original railcar was made from.  They found one in a field in Montana and took it to their shop.  The car was completely rebuilt and converted into a railcar. Goose 1 resembled a stake body truck and was used for track maintenance and to haul the US Mail.  The new version is real nice, it even has the same door lettering as the original.

Our Model T came from parts that Leon gathered from a number of places.  He told me that in one case he got a cowl and installed it on the car.  He then found a better cowl and swapped them out.  Now that's dedication!  That's why our railcar is so beautiful.

[Wayne Laepple]

Does anyone here know whether the original SR&RL railcar had isinglass side curtains that could be rolled down in case of showers? Just wondering....

[John McNamara]

Does anyone here know whether the original SR&RL railcar had isinglass side curtains that could be rolled down in case of showers? Just wondering....

Or, more precisely, "With Isinglas curtains that can roll right down in case there's a change in the weather."

There will now be a slight pause while we all sing various tunes from Oklahoma!

[Ira Schreiber]

"CHICKS AND DUCKS AND GEESE MAY SCURRY........"

Goose #1 was a no show. I believe someone one said it was undergoing some repairs.
Ira

[Stewart "Start" Rhine]

Thanks Ira... did you say DUCK!!?!    

Wayne,  Here's a bit of background on the SR&RL Model T's ...  IIRC the original rail bus #3 was open and had side curtains.  The bus was not in service that long.  The later buses, numbers 4 and 5 were "real" buses that were enclosed.  The WW&F's new Model T is based on SR&RL railcar 2 which was built for the track crew.  The car originally had a wooden tool box that ran down the center which the crew used as a seat.  The car was changed and the passenger seats were installed at Edaville in the early 1950's.  

[John L Dobson]

We had a Ford Model 'T' railcar at the recent "Quirks & Curiosities' event on the Ffestiniog. This is the one built fairly recently for Adrian Shooter's garden railway in Oxfordshire.

Here it is at Porthmadog on 1 May:

[Stewart "Start" Rhine]

Hi John,  Thanks for the post.  That's a really nice looking T.  It looks just like the car Supt. Vose car had on the SR&RL.  His car survived the scrapping of the railroad and is in the MNG collection at Portland.  The railcar has been to Sheepscot during the annual picnic.  It's a real comfortable ride.

I like the name "Quirks & Curiosities", it sounds like something on the menu at Freds Kitchen.   

Hey, maybe the WW&F should have a Quirks & Curiosities event,     Stewart

[John L Dobson]

Hi John,  Thanks for the post.  That's a really nice looking T.  It looks just like the car Supt. Vose car had on the SR&RL.  His car survived the scrapping of the railroad and is in the MNG collection at Portland.  The railcar has been to Sheepscot during the annual picnic.  It's a real comfortable ride.

I like the name "Quirks & Curiosities", it sounds like something on the menu at Freds Kitchen.   

Hey, maybe the WW&F should have a Quirks & Curiosities event,     Stewart

Hi Stewart

I think Adrian's Model 'T' inspection car is based quite closely on the Vose design - he's been a Sandy River fan for years and has a dining car loosely based on the Rangeley as part of his garden railway rolling stock.

Also at Quirks and Curiosities was a rather more modern version of the breed, from the Statfold Barn Railway:

[James Patten]

I guess that proves that you can take a modern motor vehicle and make it a two-foot gauge hi-rail vehicle.  Looks like it took a fair amount of ingenuity.

[Wayne Laepple]

Thanks for the info about the SR&RL's railcars, Stewart. I found a photo of no. 3 at Carrabasset that clearly shows rolled-up side curtains, as well as a shot of no. 2 similarly equipped. Worth considering since it's authentic?

I also saw a photo of the Vose car replica in Wales that showed it being turned around on a self-contained turntable. The turntable appeared to be hydraulic, apparently powered by the car's electrical system. There was also a head-on photo of that Land Rover with a big cowcatcher pilot!

[John L Dobson]

Thanks for the info about the SR&RL's railcars, Stewart. I found a photo of no. 3 at Carrabasset that clearly shows rolled-up side curtains, as well as a shot of no. 2 similarly equipped. Worth considering since it's authentic?

I also saw a photo of the Vose car replica in Wales that showed it being turned around on a self-contained turntable. The turntable appeared to be hydraulic, apparently powered by the car's electrical system. There was also a head-on photo of that Land Rover with a big cowcatcher pilot!

There are a lot more photographs of these railcars - and the other Quirks and Curiosities that attended the event - at http://www.roger-dimmick.fotopic.net/

[Steve Smith]

A photo taken this week to show a bit of the workmanship in more detail.

[Ted Miles]

on the Rail Bus question we have one here in California that lives at the Jamestown, 1897 State historic Park. sorry its standard gauge.

In reference to the Galloping Geese is Colorado; the folks at the Ridgway Railroad Museum have done a similar project. They built a replica of the long gone Goose #1 with assorted Model A parts i think.

And the Colorado RailRoad Museum has made all four of theirs operational.

I think the only Goose that is on static display is the one in Teluride.

And there is the Alexander Chapter, down in North Carloina that is building a rail truck out of a pile of rusty parts. Their project used to run on the narrow gauge East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad.

this same group has just re-built two narrow gauge box cars. one of them is Lawndale Railway and the other is from the ET & WNC.

Ted Miles

[Gordon Cook]

I thought it would be useful to shed some light on the RailBus's challenges on Saturday of the Picnic, since so many were watching and wondering what was keeping it from running.

It was run during the week before with no trouble, and on Saturday AM it started and was run out to the stub switch, where it died. It couldn't be restarted.

Ignition problems were suspected because we couldn't get a consistent spark at the plugs. However, all or our troubleshooting failed to identify the cause. Everything was brand new and seemed to work fine, just no spark when all together and cranked.

This 'T' engine has a distributor and coil added, which is a common (as I understand it) modification.  The distributor was familiar to me as similar to the Bosch unit that was on my 1968 Volvo. It was driven from a vertical  shaft which was turned by a helical gear set from the camshaft.

After sleeping on it Saturday night, Ric Sisson and I decided to tackle it one more time. After further timing and rearranging of spark plug wires, we got it to start and run well. However, when shut off, it wouldn't start. Then we realized that the position of the rotor in relationship to Top Dead Center of the #1 cylinder seemed to be moving around! Clearly this was a problem. We removed the distributor and were able to manually turn the drive shaft for the distributor when the motor was not turning, so it was now obvious the timing was moving around radically when the engine was stopped because the camshaft gear was turning on the shaft. The lack of spark was because the rotor wasn't aligned with the contact for the plug. We also thought the points in the distributor weren't very consistent, but now we're not sure how much of a problem that was.

This distributor modification required a helical gear to be screwed onto the end of the camshaft at the front of the engine. The instructions were ambiguous about how much to tighten it, and relied on the compression of the engine to hold the camshaft from turning.  We think that it really couldn't be tightened sufficiently with that procedure.

The gear was indeed found to need tightening, and after that was done, the timing was reset and it ran and started consistently.

In conclusion it was not really anything that was obviously avoidable, and the real culprit hid itself well until the big day.

The RailCar is truly yet another amazing example of skill and vision and dedication from our members.

[Dave Buczkowski]

Gawdon;
Many kudos to you and Ric. Had I been faced with your problems I would have whipped out my gold AAA card and waited for the 2 foot gauge wrecker.
Dave