S aturday (4/29)

     Work continued on 4533.

     Sunday (4/30)

     Ray Cannon was Dispatcher with Chris Howell, Jim Robertson, David Baynes and Mel Boteler as crew.

     Tuesday (5/2)

     Carl Merson was Dispatcher with Dan Lawrence, Charlie Plantholt, John Diefenbach, Jim Robertson and Jerry Kelly as crew for a charter by the MTA.

Saturday (5/6)
With parts in hand, courtesy of our friends up north, David Crow, Ed Amrhein and I replaced the damaged bus bar and fingers on the 7407's accelerator. The accelerator is a large drum located under the center of the car. The accelerator contains 98 resistors that are used to control the speed of the car during both acceleration and braking. As the car is accelerating or braking, two moving wheels open and close fingers in the accelerator to add or remove the resistors. These fingers have to control currents up to 500 amps, many times more that used in a home.

     After a quick test of the accelerator, I replaced a carbon contact on the limit relay and adjusted the contact gap. The limit relay is the device on the car that controls how fast the accelerator adds or removes resistance based on the operator's requests.

Work on 4533 continues with the addition of decals to the inside of the car. These decals are larger versions of those you might have used when you built plastic models. All of these decals were from the transit company when the streetcars were taken out of service and are at least 35 years old. While Mark Dawson was working on the decals, Gene Carson and Buster Hughes continued to scrape old pant and paint. Also the folding doors had been remove and were being prepared for painting.

     During the afternoon Dan Lawrence was Dispatcher with Buster Hughes as crew.

     During the evening Bob Krueger was Dispatcher with John Diefenbach, Paul Ritterhoff and Carl Thistel as crew.

     Sunday (5/7)

     Dan Lawrence was Dispatcher with Rick Williams, Justin Thillman and Navjokas as crew.

     Saturday (5/13)

     Ed Amrhein and Carl Merson cut the grass all along the line.

     After the grass at the Visitor's center was cut, Ed, Dennis Yeager, Justin Thillman and I went to the Loop at 28th Street to work on the over head line and signal system. While Ed, Dennis and Justin replaced a broken span wire, I ran trolley contact wires from the current contactor location 200 feet south. After lunch, the whole crew, including Paul Ritterhoff, moved the trolley contactor south two poles so that all cars arriving at 27th Street ould be counted.

     Gene Carson, Mark Dawson and Buster Hughes continued to work on 4533. While Buster and Gene worked of scraping paint, Mark started to add the lettering to the inside of the second hood.

     Sunday (5/14)

     Rick Williams was Dispatcher with Dan Lawrence and John Diefenbach as crew for Mother's Day. They first had to repair a broken pull-off at 28th street before revenue service could start, but they had the line open within one hour.