The following items were repaired, installed, or maintained by the "class crew" on September 27/28, 2003 :
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Alpine Wig-Wag/Motor Switch
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Saturday was mostly a construction day on the Alpine Crossing Wig Wag repair. All of us assisted the Hirth's with completing (almost) the repair of the North (East) wig wag. A pull box was installed on the west side of the tracks (and north of Alpine) to allow connection of the new conduit from under the tracks to the existing wig wag circuit in the 2" conduit. Then after finally finding the old conduit coming out of the Wig Wag, another pull box was installed immediately west of the wig wag. This box allowed us to easily connect the old wig wag conduit to the new conduit coming under the track as well as provide a connection to a new 2" conduit leading north under the new pedestrian entrance that is now under construction. Everything was then hooked up and the wig wag works better than ever. It appears that the old cable was shunting the wig wag voltage even with the new temporary circuit -- voltage is still on the old cable when it was fully disconnected (a future effort is needed to properly decommission this cable). The only part still "open" is the completion of the new 2" conduit under the new entrance so dirt around the new wig wag pull box is still piled nearby. Overall it now looks great and seems to be working perfect ! ! We all then rode the train to relax for a little while and "test" the new Wig Wag connections.
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Signal Shop
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We installed additional brackets on the new shelves in the Signal Shop to better support Allen's new shelves which were sagging slightly.
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Signal Garden
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Sunday was just Allen and Gary where we started the morning with weeding the signal garden, trimming the tree, and moving dirt around to better channel the water -- the weeds sure do thrive. We also adjusted some sprinkler heads and extended the daily watering on time from 7 to 15 minutes.
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Allen and Gary returned to the Signal Garden and once again studied and discussed possible cabling options with the existing conduits. As you have said, we think that an additional 6 or so wires is possible in the conduit from the 3-color to the controller cabinet. With that and a few more wires from the 3-color to the searchlight cabinet we should be OK with our basic plans for our next step with Barry.
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We also opened up the Semaphore case and studied the mechanism and wiring. After a lot of looking, thinking and worrying, we removed the wooden support and tried manually (no power was ever connected) moving the semaphore through all 3 colors. We were pleased to find out that it freely moves through all positions and seems to be in pretty good shape. We also studied the wiring to try and determine how it should be connected --- it appears that there is a solenoid, a motor, a set of rotary contacts, and an over limit contact. It is not obvious how this all works yet but we think that a little studying of the manual and/or some tutoring from Gene should make it clear to all of us. After our "experimenting" we returned it to it's previous position and replaced the wooden block.
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Noticed that the Signal Garden Searchlight signal needs conduit/fittings from the signal head to the mast. Minor but it needs to be done.
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