Car 57 and caboose 2516 in the atmospheric new home

car57 · **Posted:** Mon Oct 07, 2013 12:03 am

Today we ran out to the launch site and got the old mercury lights working, very noisy but they give the coolest light to work by.......
work days will be the next two Saturdays for sure, starting on 57's south side. Volunteers always welcome !
Mike Pannell

Afboone · **Posted:** Mon Oct 07, 2013 8:23 am

Mike, are you guys able to control the temp in there? Do you see any issues with the wood now being out of the weather causing you issues with shrinking?

You guys are doing a great job. Enjoy the new home!

FLO · **Joined:** Tue Jan 25, 2011 2:07 am **Posts:** 328

Your 2516 project is on the official Union Pacific 150th anniversary website:
http://up150.com/stories/200/up-2516

car57 · **Posted:** Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:55 pm

And today my bus joined them.....all the toys in one box !

Mike

daylight4449 · **Posted:** Mon Oct 14, 2013 4:58 pm

Just a heads up Mike, but if you're in need of parts for the bus, there's one up here in MA that is mechanically complete. It's owned by Maxwell Silverman's in Worcester, and all it's done is sit for the last ten or so years... Not sure if its the same type of bus though
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38039613@N08/4742063558/

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Mon Oct 14, 2013 5:59 pm

Can you open the roof doors to get more light? Or would that cause an escalation from the Soviets?

And yes, I feel your pain with the sodium lights. SMRS's future shop building is lit with them, and with 3 of them going, it sounds like you're inside a transformer. Full of bees.

The light fixtures do age, the main issue being capacitors and things getting loose, which causes them to vibrate at transformer frequency. At WRM we overhauled one of them, replacing the capacitors, and it both quieted down and got a lot brighter.

Although really, the way to go in the future is LED. The actual LEDs are both mature and very cheap, e.g. about $20 for LEDs equivalent to a 100w sodium light, which itself is equivalent to 500 watts of incandescent. The power supply and packaging are still catching up, but these are fairly easy problems to solve. Just somebody's got to do it.