Wire goes up at NORM

Trolley wire is now up at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum (NORM). It was strung on Thursday, December 10th. Used were Cleveland Railway differential crane 0711 to move Cleveland Transit System (CTS) line car 024 around. The 0711 has a gas generator(58 Chrysler hemi!) /rectifier set up on her deck to provide power. Line car 024 held the reel of 4/0 grooved trolley wire and was used to string the line. Line car 024 was home built in 1960 by CTS from Shaker Rapid center entrance car 1217. 1217 was built in 1914 by the Kuhlman Car Company for the Cleveland Railway, Cleveland’s city system streetcar company.

During this year complete bracket arm assemblies were assembled on the ground and then hung on poles set a couple years earlier. Ground anchor wires and anchor plates in concrete were set on the end poles. Museum volunteers Chuck Legree, Susan Legree, Tim Lassan, John Kostelnik, Walt Stoner, and Steve Heister worked on this. Then line
car 024 was prepped by Chuck Legree and Tim Lassan. The roof was repaired, the swing out work platform rebuilt and a reel brake constructed. The original reel brake was missing when we got the car. Line Department head Chuck Legree designed and built his own brake. It worked great, although it did moan like a love sick cow when the reel
was rotating as wire was reeled out. It was amusing to hear!

On wire day, the train of 0711 and 024 was taken to the end of the line. Our Gehl skid loader was used to pull the overhead wire out of 024 and past 0711 to the first pole. Then using our bucket truck the trolley wire was attached. Then our train headed north to the first bracket arm. Here the wire was tied off loosely with rope, then went to bracket arm 2 and repeated the process. This continued until the leading north wheel of 024 was up against the car stops at the north end of the line being electrified. Then Using a come along, slack was taken out of the wire and attached to the end poles. The pantograph on 024 was raised for pictures. In the coming days the wire will be properly tensioned and hangers attached at all the bracket arms.

The crew that did this consisted of Line Department head Chuck Legree. He was directing the work crew. He worked primarily on the roof of 024. He monitored the wire as it was reeled out and then tied it off to each bracket arm. Inside 024 working the reel brake was Jim Mladonicky. Jim Rivers was motorman on 0711. Walt Stoner was on the
ground watching the train operation, another set of eyes on the wire at a different angle and relaying signals from Chuck to Jim for train movement.

Thursday, November 10th was a good day at NORM.

More pictures. Also check our Facebook page for more pictures and info. https://www.facebook.com/Northern-Ohio- ... 544183676/

Interesting, 024 has a trolley pole on one end,but a pantograph on the other.

Hi Steve and all the Volunteers at Northern Ohio,

Congratulations on stringing the wire at your museum. Lots of time, effort and planning go into making this all happen.

Wonderful news.

We look forward to learning more progress as these efforts move forward.

Karl Johnson
Western Railway Museum

Applause! Applause!

Wesley

Major congrats on this milestone! And for doing it the right way by using vintage workcars for the project. It's always good to see them used for the purpose they were built for. Or converted into in the case of 024.

Congrats to the folks at NORM from your friends and cohorts at PTM. Now I'll ask the obvious question: When do you expect to put 600V on the nice new wire?

Probably they use the trolley pole to operate the air compressor at start-up in order to have compressed air to raise the pantograph (probably by releasing the latch holding the pantograph down).

Sacramento Northern locomotive 654 at WRM has the same arrangement for just that reason.

Some questions have been raised about 024. Let me try to answer them. The car was built in 1914 as a city streetcar. In 1923 it was transferred to the Shaker Rapid. It served there in passenger service until retirement in 1960. At the same time the Cleveland Transit System was in a bit of a pickle. When the CTS Rapid began service in 1955 they intended to perform all maintenance from 4 wheel track cart mounted equipment including tower cars. Most of this equipment was bought from the neighboring Cleveland Union Terminal after they ripped down their wires the year before. After a few years of working off this track cart and speeder equipment, they realized they needed a real line car.

Ironically CTS had scrapped six years earlier 1928 built streetcars that could have been nice line car conversion stock. They even scrapped a couple line cars converted from old streetcars. So CTS turned to their neighbor Shaker Rapid and bought car 1217 and certain control equipment from another car going to scrap. In the Windermere shops CTS built 024 from 1217. They discarded the Brill 51 trucks and found a pair of heavier duty arch bar trucks still lying around somewhere on CTS Property.

When the car emerged from the shop in 1960 it was stunning. It was painted in the same paints used on the high platform rapid cars. It only had a pantograph at that point, no trolley pole. The territory it would serve was pantograph compatible.

That all changed when the CTS and Shaker merged into the new Regional Transit Authority in 1974. At that point there were 3 shop facilities on the Rapid, former CTS facilities Windermere and Brookpark, and Shaker Kingsbury. The decision was made to consolidate the servicing of all work equipment at Kingsbury. This included former CTS 1925 and 1928 built Differential built cranes and dump cars. Ironically these cars never got pantographs and ran on the CTS rapid with poles only intil retirement in 1980. But back to the Shaker shops, this area was trolley pole only territory. So a pole was added to 024 so it could reach its new servicing base. Also with a pole it now could roam former Shaker trackage if need be. Once the Shaker Rapid was rebuilt in the early 80's and the Kingsbury facility retired in 1984, no trolley pole only wire remained on the Rapid. Eventually once the last of the Shaker PCC's were retired the wire was reconfigured for pantograph only operation. Even with no trolley pole only wire remaining, the pole remained on the car. As noted by astute readers, the pole is there today. It is not needed for pumping up air to deploy the pantograph.

Congratulations. To add to Davir Hamley's question, are you going to initially use the crane car generator to supply power or do you have a substation?
Also, one suggestion. If you plan to run SHRT 1200s or any other single end cars, put trolley wheels on them. Wheels work much more reliably than shoes when backpoling.