Totally ignorant, where is the repair kit used? The jack in your latest photo implies truck or other weight bearing assembly.
On either side of the bolster there is located a side bearing to prevent the car from rocking. They are attached to the truck and slide against a plate on the under side of the body when the truck swivels under the car.
In the photo above you can see one of the bearings. The ram for one of the jacks is seen right behind it.
A quick search pulls up A. Stucki Co. model 656-C roller side bearing for 70 ton cars. That sucker is really worn down compared to a photo of a new one.
Ouch, and to realize that this is just a small, relatively inexpensive repair kit when compared to the total cost of rebuilding the car.....
Hopefully the Union Pacific will now allow the car to be moved to Austin, Texas. It seems every time they come out and approve a job we did they come up with something new. Why can't they give it to us all at once? I think it is just foot dragging. All this was done on a flat car with a passenger car load on it. The KCS Good Cheer will be unloaded onto newly acquired trucks in Austin where we will repaint it and eventually put back in service on the Hill Country Flyer out of Cedar Park. The Austin Steam Train Group also needs the flat car to move some passenger cars they sold to a group somewhere in Pennsylvania (I think). They have brass journal (fiction) bearings on their trucks and can not be interchanged.
That's a nice looking car. I hope it's fundamentally sound for a relatively inexpensive restoration....once you get UP off your back.
Yes, the frame has been substantially rebuilt. It has new side sills and crash posts. It is an aluminum car and the electrolysis had taken its toll. Some of the beams looked like Swiss cheese. The trucks needed major rebuilding and it was found to be much less expensive to acquire some serviceable used trucks off of a car that was scrapped. The ex MKT coach New Braunfelds is also going with it to Austin and is ready to be put into excursion service. The lease money from the Hill Country Flyer will be put into restoring the Good Cheer. UP also had us do a lot of work in the New Braunfelds. We had to pull the cover plates off the wheel bearings so they could inspect them, adjust the shims on the side bearings, replace some valves in the brake system, replace the rubber parts on the bolster anchor rods and remove the buffer plate from one end of the car. If a car with a shelf coupler, like a tank car, needed to be coupled on, the buffer plate would interfere so UP wanted an idler flat hung on that end. A lot less expensive to just remove the buffer.
Its the local office. The actual car inspector is a good guy and helps out whenever possible. Just his supervisor is kind of grumpy.
