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Northern Alberta Flanger Restoration

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Posted by SD70Dude on Monday, December 2, 2019 9:56 PM

BaltACD
SD70Dude

The first class accomoditations of railroad work equipment.

At least they upgraded to oil stoves instead of coal!

The "air conditioning" (screens for the windows) is stored in the shelf built into the ceiling above the bed and desk.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, December 2, 2019 9:35 PM

SD70Dude

The first class accomoditations of railroad work equipment.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by SD70Dude on Monday, December 2, 2019 8:43 PM

We have one of each of those as well.  The snowplow was fully operational when it was last used about 10 years ago.  The spreader is complete, but requires a lot of work (at least one of its air cylinders is seized).

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, December 2, 2019 10:03 AM

I'm rather fond of snowfighting equipment, especially Russell snowplowe and modified Jordan spreaders.  A flanger goes quite nicely with either of these.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by SD70Dude on Saturday, November 30, 2019 9:40 PM

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by Penny Trains on Monday, November 11, 2019 8:12 PM

That's quite a bit of work!  Congratulations!  Big Smile

Trains, trains, wonderful trains.  The more you get, the more you toot!  Big Smile

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, November 10, 2019 10:15 AM

Your photos are just fine 'Dude, and thanks for posting them!

If there's an upside to all that heavy restoration work I'd say it's the removal of the "skin" of the car so everyone can see just how it was put together.  Later rot notwithstanding that was one ruggedly built piece of equipment.

Great job on the restoration!  Good thing everything still works, you never know, you might need it one day!

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Northern Alberta Flanger Restoration
Posted by SD70Dude on Saturday, November 9, 2019 6:25 PM

I posted this on RYPN, should probably put it up over here as well.

I meant to post these a few months ago after seeing Ken Jones' update on the Niagara Railway Museum's CN Flanger project, at the Alberta Railway Museum we recently finished restoring our wood flanger, Northern Alberta 16601.

Niagara Railway Museum CN Flanger thread:

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43561

We also make our own tongue-and-groove out of standard 1x4 lumber, and have had good success treating it with Copper Naphthenate before painting.

We had to perform some fairly major structural repairs to the wood side frame of NAR 16601, as shown in my photos. I was not able to get any usable shots of the work that was done to shore up the rafters, the outside ends had rotted and disintegrated on most of them. One of our skilled carpenters came up with a splice design to replace the rotted section and bolt the new piece onto what remained of the original rafter. The car also received a new rolled rubber (EPDM) roof.

Our Flanger's blade and air system was found to be in good condition, a few minor piping repairs and some grease were all that was needed to make it operational.

Here is the finished result on display outside:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rc0e4 ... Et9pwfb_tZ

The worst rotted section of the side frame:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=11wWm8 ... FOrPrUdAt-

The same section after being repaired:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1MVlIU ... bsSZyzWR6R

Two shots of the side of the car. It's a little cramped inside our shop so getting a wide shot of the entire car was next to impossible:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cTH_l ... 4JBiAAbtfW

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17CNbf ... wSBvITLYCA

Apologies for the relatively poor quality of the photos, my phone does not have the best camera. I'll post some more photos of the roof and interior of the car when I get a chance.

The wood beams are bolted to the car's steel underframe. For the section near the end of the car we also put in several vertical bolts to secure the replacement sections together, and to also secure them to the remaining parts of the original beams.

It is difficult to see in my photos, but several of the vertical side frame boards have a metal rod in them, running the entire height of the car. We had to cut a groove in the back of the replacement vertical board to accommodate it, in addition to drilling a vertical hole through both large replacement beam sections.

The replacement sections were made out of pressure-treated 2x10's, with a shim of treated plywood to get the right thickness. Two 2x10's and one piece of plywood were screwed together in the wood shop before being brought over to the car and having the bolt holes drilled.

The section under the car's side door had already been replaced at some point in the past by the NAR shops. That replacement section had rotted out over the years, but it was easy enough to remove and measure for a replacement. This is where we got the idea to try the same repair on the other rotted sections.

This is also a cautionary tale about the importance of inspecting every part of your equipment regularly and making repairs as soon as you find a problem.  The roof on our Flanger had been leaking in multiple places for some time, which is what caused the majority of the structural damage. 

If we had caught this sooner it would have required less than half the effort to fix.  But as it is we caught it just in time, before some areas of the car literally fell apart.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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