Maintenance in Montreal

After travelling light all weekend we arrived in Montreal monday at midnight. Tuesday was cleaning up the car and moving everything from the old boxcar to the kitchen car to get ready for the transfer. Wednesday I helped Pat (the supervisor) with the end-of-year database stuff, and was inputting the data from time sheets from the previous three months, which took all day. Thursday and Friday we were testing the yard in montreal. And just like the previous yards we tested, we were up at 6 to get ready for a 7am start, only to start moving at 10ish. There was one time on Friday when Pat was making phone calls that I was in charge of the train – I told them when to go and set up the test files. I tested two tracks by myself that way. It was a pretty cool feeling.

Friday evening the new boxcar arrived, so we split up our train and with a bunch of delays moved the boxcar and the testing car into the shop. Saturday we took a look at the DGRMS system under the train.

It’s a set of wheels with a split axle that’s attached to a long hydraulically powered arm so it can move up and down as well as push out on the tracks. It was in for maintenance performed by ENSCO, the company that developed the system for us. They took a month longer than expected, and it was supposed to be all ready for us to use, just hook up and go. But a lot of grease lines and wires were not connected, and some of the sensing equipment needed to be completely replaced. But the main thing was that there was a 2-inch thick steel rod supporting the two large cylinders that wasn’t there anymore, and the supports of it were all bent out of place. It must have hit something high on the tracks and broken right off. And after a further look at the cylinders which were moving when they were supposed to be stiff, we took the covers off and found out that the impact had also sheared a bunch of bolts off and moved the large pin around. After a lot of calls and head-scratching we moved the cylinders back into place using a hydraulic ram and replaced the sheared bolts.

Meanwhile I was connecting the grease lines back on, and the designer seemed to go out of his way to put them in the most inaccessible places. Some of them were 8 or 10 inches down a hole barely large enough for a hand.  I had to go out and buy a set of wrenches with a head that could rotate 90 degrees to tighten them. I also helped mount the lasers and cameras and lights.  

Sunday I got off, which was the first free day I’ve had since oct 21^st, and likely won’t get another until this weekend, 19 days almost straight work. We didn’t work last weekend when we were traveling from medicine hat to Montreal, but I was stuck on the train with very little to do, so I didn’t really get out or was free to do whatever I wanted. And we’ve been working long days too, starting at 6 or 7, and often returning back to the hotel around 9 or 10 at night. So on Sunday I slept in until 12:45 (I needed it). Wandered around downtown Montreal in the afternoon, and went to an IMAX show called rocky mountain express, where they follow a steam engine through the rockies and look at the history of making the railroad through the mountains. It was a very good representation of what I see every day, the views from the train. I wasn’t blown away or impressed with the scenery they showed, it was more a small smile and ‘yup, that’s about what it’s like to travel by train’. And it struck me that my job is so awesome that it takes an award-winning IMAX movie to accurately portray what my daily life is like. That people pay money and take time to go and watch what I see every day from my office window. I’m pretty lucky J. If you want to know more what sort of views I see from the train, much better than what pictures can portray, I’d suggest checking it out if you can (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pFocxpM524).