Sunday, December 22, 2019

65 Makes its Debut

We're excited to report that Car 65 made its first public service trip since 1997 Friday night. Galen and Kelly would like to thank the crew who worked so hard with them this past month to make this Holiday miracle happen- Wil, Jayden, Justin, Roger, Mike, Jeremy, and Adam. The car was upgraded in status from emergency replacement for 1326 to desperately needed to keep Winterfest running smoothly as 5645 had to be placed out of service this past week due to truck damage, leaving 836 the only operational high passenger capacity closed car.
65 came out a wonderful success, taking 2 trips Friday night and another 5 or 6 on Saturday without any major issues. The car remains under shop supervision at this time and will only run in limited service. 5645 will be switched up to the shop after the ice melts so the truck can be reviewed to determine the extent of the damage.

65 on North Road curve before its first passenger trip Friday night

65 waits for its second night in service Saturday afternoon


On another happy note, progress continues on reverse engineering full series/parallel segments for car 836. Kelly 3D modeled a second approximation for what an unworn segment would look like and Wil got it 3D printed thanks to his school. They and Jayden test fitted it into the car yesterday and it is looking good. It needs a bit more tweaking to replace lost material and match a factory scale sketch, but is a marked improvement over prototype #1.

Segment prototype. Wil Gambardella photo

Test fitting the prototype into 836