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CAMA Restoration Project: Part One: Chassis Tionesta Valley Railroad #111 Caboose CAMA's Tionesta Valley wood chassis caboose presented new challenges every time we removed another piece of siding. Advanced decay of the chassis and frame became apparent early on in the restoration process. |
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| ABOVE: The advanced state of chassis rot is visible of this underside photo of the remains of the body bolsters and main chassis sill beams. The original floor, made up of tongue and groove 1.5x6" stock was unusable. Most of the lumber stock used in the restoration had to be custom cut. |
ABOVE: Our restoration was carried out as true to the original as we could manage. Each original piece was removed and measured. Mortise and tenon joinery duplicated the original whenever possible. Above, the 3 pieces that will make up one body bolster are next to the sill beams notched to receive this bolster. On the far right is the mortised yellow pine endbeam. |
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| ABOVE: Here, the new end beam is ready to be fit to the Southern yellow pine main/sill beams. Already bolted into place is the coupler mounting hardware, saved from the original chassis. All the usable original iron hardware was wire brushed, and coated with rust resistant paint. |
ABOVE: Bob Hungerford torches rusted hardware from the second body bolster. In many cases acid from the wood, combined with atmospheric moisture and rain water leakage, accelerated the corrosion of mounting bolts necessitating replacement. |
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| ABOVE: Bob Hungerford measures for the bolt holes to attach one of the the body bolsters to the chassis. The bolster is a "laminate" of native oak and the two original iron barstock reinforcements. The remains of one of the original bolsters are shown in the first photo of this set. |
ABOVE: Our new chassis sees the light of day for the first time at the 2002 Fall Festival. It is rolling on shop trucks fabricated in-house. The original arch bar trucks were long ago removed from the chassis. The chassis employs a central "king post" and is held together and stiffened with four 1" diameter threaded "truss" rods running the length of the chassis. |