Western Railroad Discussion > Update on SP 1006 at OERM

Today two tasks continued to be dealt with for SP 1006. John and Tom continued their usual task during restoration--cleaning off years of accumulated dirt, dust and and a mixture of congealed oil and fuel sticking to the underside of the locomotive. We used hand scrapers, air powered scrapers, and needle "guns". As you can see in the first photo, the locomotive has been raised high enough on shop trucks and cribbing to allow us to actually walk underneath the bottom of the locomotive to allow access to "yucky" stuff. The problem with this, is that you have a couple of old men working with our arms above our heads which causes us to tire easily. We are also being covered by falling debris as we scrape the bottom. The stuff gets in our hair, pockets, sticks to our glasses and generally leaves us filthy by the end of the day.
The second photo shows Dave and Carl removing the brake cylinders for overhaul. John, Dave and Carl jack up the rear set of wheels on the truck so we can attach a welder to the cables in order to power the traction motor, A "gear" noise was detected causing us to remove the gear cover box for inspection. The gears appeared to be well lubed so a further examination will have to be done to pinpoint the source of the noise we heard! Stay tuned!!!!

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There will always be a "gear growl" from the
pinion and bull gears meshing, but if it is excessive
then the main culprits could be the motor support
bearings around the axle could be worn beyond limits
or the pinion shaft bearings inside the motor are defective.

Either of these could cause the pinion and bull gears to
mess too tightly together, creating the excessive gear noise.

Mike

After we remove the wheel set from the traction motor, we'll inspect the support bearings. We'll also connect the welder to the bare motor to see what the armature bearing sounds like. As you suggest, we're pretty sure that one of those two items is the culprit.

You hgo volunteers. Overhead work is always very tiring.