Greetings Trolley Fansby Craig Stith I’m writing this on the eve of our last day of operations for the 2017 season. We’ve had another great season with a reliable Car 21, excellent volunteer crews, new souvenirs, and greater participation of Depot Agents. This year we had some new faces in operations roles. Alan Cram, in his second year as a director also took on the souvenir management role. Alan replaced Susan Browning and Maddie who had served in this role previously. Bob Browning continued as de facto Operations Manager. When Bob and Susan took a late-season vacation, Thea Sapienza stepped in to cover the crew scheduling and other operations tasks in Bob’s absence. Now that we’re at the end of the season, we must look ahead to the annual Volunteer Banquet. See the text box below. For those of you that attended last year, it’s at the same location, the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL). This year we’ll be in the classroom immediately to the south of the entrance. The acoustics should be better there than the entrance atrium we used last year. Erik Larson of the EECL has again offered to give a tourof the facility to those who arrive at 5:00 pm. His tour should last about 45 minutes, and be complete in time for the beginning of festivities. Other big activities we’ve been working on are the continuation of the Car 25 restoration, and in anticipation of its completion in a year or two, an expansion of the Mountain Avenue barn to accommodate Car 25 next to Car 21, with enclosed storage on the south side of the barn in a new lean-to shed. Alan Cram has been leading the permit process withthe City. The Board has appropriated 50% of operations income to go to the Barn Fund. And we’ve started a “Buy-a-Brick” campaign that many of you may be aware of and have already participated in. Bricks sell at several levels starting at $150 for a personal message. Bricks will be installed adjacentto the boarding location at Mountain and Howes. If you’re interested in purchasing a brick, there's more information on page 2. I hope you all have a good fall and winter. We’ll be in touch again in the spring.

Trolley operations updateby Bob Browning At the start of this season, the Coloradoan printed an article stating that we were in need of motormen for the upcoming season. This piece was written in a style different from that wehad used in the past and, as a result, the response was overwhelming! We were quickly facing a three-year backlog of motormen trainees and we didn’t want to keep people “on the hook” for that long. As a result, we stopped taking applications

when we had twelve applicants, and brought more instructors into play to train new people. The list was whittleddown due to attrition, inability to adequately control the car, and illness, but we did end up with five new motormen for the season. On the down side, our charters for this year did not keep pace with the number of charters we ran last season. To date, we’ve booked only 38 charters when we had about 56 booked at this time last year. We definitely saw less participation from the Poudre School District (PSD) than in the past; a fact attributed to an unknown telephone- equipment outage around the time that the PSD second graders started “studying” Fort Collins history. We also lost four charters during the period when our overhead wire was damaged due to the snowstorm in early May. In speaking of “the snowstorm damage”, we need to recognize and thank the City of Fort Collins Electric and Forestry departments for their rapid response. The foresters worked diligently to get the tree damage along Mountain Ave. cleaned up so that repairs could be made, and the City Electric crews quickly repaired the wire which was downed intwo places. We estimate that we were able to resume our operations about a month earlier due to City assistance than we could have doing the work on our own. We attempted to thank the individual people for their assistance by inviting them to ride on the car as it lead the City’s 4th of July Parade.This was extremely well-received and is a practice that we’ll continue on in following seasons. Although the number of charters was reduced, there were some real “deuzies”! We had two wedding proposals, one wedding proposal anniversary, and several weddings. The Human Race was an unqualified success for us and we actually sold seats on the car to the families of race participants. We continued to refine our race procedures to increase safety and the entire event went without a hitch. This has turned into a win-win situation for both the race organizers and for us and we want to continue this one on aswell. As of this writing, there have been no serious incidents or accidents this year. We’ve had the usual spate of back-polling and rope-breaking problems, but no serious problemswith safety or car performance. A small fire occurred when the compressor switch failed, but it was quickly extinguished,the switch replaced, and no runs were lost. The car was “trashed” by the dry chemical fire retardant, and we are now using carbon dioxide units. Lastly, our archiving efforts are continuing. We think that we’ve looked at all of the information that the Society has on hand, scanned when we want to retain, and donated the original documents to the museum. We continue to ask our people to let us look at their personal files so that we can catalog and retain some of that information.

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Trolley FareFort Collins Municipal Railway News

Vol 37, No. 2, October 2017 www.fortcollinstrolley.org

2017 Volunteer Banquet All FCMRS volunteers who contributed this year are invited todinner on October 27 at 6:00 pm at the Engines and Energy

Conversion Laboratory in the old power plant on northCollege Ave. Limited parking is available in front of the

entrance and overflow is across the tracks next to a garage.

Welcome new members! These folks joined our society since February:

James Bowers Margo CarlockBob and Margo Crandell James DavisMeg Dunn Lisa Fay-ThorpTod Galbate Tyler GreenRoss Lane Arden LattinPaul Loughlin Kathlend and Kevin MabryKristi Maczko Nicole McMahonDave and Susan Miller Randy MoenchKirt Muller Ewan WebbPeter West, Denver Chuck Zakzek

Barn expansion updateby Alan Cram I've been working with City planners to get approvals for thenew bay to the Mountain Ave. barn, which will house our MoWequipment and materials now in the south bay. The new bay will replace the open shed on the south side and extend 20 feet west to house all our maintanance vehicles. At this time, the final plans have been submitted to the City for plan review. We have a contractor who is working with us and ready to get started as soon as we have the project cost in hand. With volunteer help we can keep the cost down approximately $160,000 and complete the project by summer 2018, ready for Car 25. The volunteers that are working on Car 25 are looking forward to the barn expansion so they can put the final touches on the car, including exterior painting. It would be great if we can have Car 25 ready to run in 2019 to honor Car 21’s 100th birthday (Car 25's 100th birthday will be 2022). Please help us get the Mountain Ave. barn ready by supporting us financially What a great time the next few years will be for the Fort Collins Municipal Railway! Here's an update on our fund-raising activities:

Evening at Pour Bros. Thea Sapienza says we're returning to Pour Brothers Community Tavern on Linden St. in old town on November 8 from 6 to 8 pm. All tips during those two hours will go to the barn-expansion project. If you have time, please to stop by and visit with us.

Al Jackson (left) at the last Pour Bros. event explaining overhead hardware we needed to purchase to hang

new wire in each barn for testing and operating Car 25.

Buy a brick paver! Our buy-a-brick program is helping us expand the Mountain Ave. barn. Currently we have sold 43 bricks. Our goal is 50 bricks, so order yours soon as we will close sales at the end of October. The Board of Directors has authorized the engraving of eight additional bricks to honor each of the cars 20 through 26 and a special brick noting the operation of the trolleys and expansion of the Mountain Avenue barn for the storage of Cars 21 and 25. The bricks will be placed at the Mountain Avenue and Howes Boarding platform in the spring, before the start of next summer’s operation. The date to be announced in the early spring. For more info on the program or to make a brick donation, pleaseemail me, abcram@gmail.com or us at: fcmrs1919@gmail.com

Car 25 tasks completed this spring and summer Car 21 carmen, Chuck Bade and Tom Mulroney completed and tested all air lines and controls on the car. Notes from Chuck: After several attempts to get the B-end foot pedal to function properly and not leak, we decided to replace it with an air- actuated valve. Air pressure must be maintained at all times in the safety control pipe connected to the K1 Emergency Valve or the car will go into emergencymode. This pressure either comes from the main reservoir through the pilot valve when the controller handle is held down, or from the straight air (brake) pipe. The foot valves are supposed to route brake air to the safety control pipe but are prone to failure so new valves takes their place. Main reservoir air is connected to one input and brake air is connected to the other input. The pilot valve is used to control which input is selected by providing pressure to actuate the valve. For historical accuracy, we'll still display the inoperative footvalves on the floor. See the next photo. Jim Bowers installed new glass and refinished cherry trim in upper side-windows. Jim also finished fastening and is now painting the letterboard around the car (green metal above windows). Jim Thake, Tom, Chuck and Al installed motors on the power truck which is ready to mate with the car when able help is available. Roger Smith finished fitting interior trim and is working with a local vendor to make new ceramic buzzer buttons (theold ones were wooden). Bob Browning began finishing side windows which Roger Smith previously rebuilt. Bob is also looking for a vendor thatcan static-paint some fittings. Charlie Rock has finished rebuilding the second controller,continuity checked the controllers and is ready to wire the motors after we install the power truck under the car. Earl Paige finished installing refinished red panels under side windows. Mark Babcock sand-blasted and painted overhead-wire hardware and repaired damaged exterior details. New conductor Marsha Rose helped clean and paint the new sander valves and some other interior parts. She also helped Al clean brass window guides. Chuck and Tom also wired the overhead control panels and solved the problem of a missing headlight switch by using the unused snap switch from Car 21, eliminating confusion with motormen trainees. Chuck also redesigned

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his prototyped PVC sander valve and made three more valvesfor Car 25. Tom and Marsha painted the valves. Blake Bergersen helped paint inside the car, and bring down and clean some of the seats that had set on shelves for years. Al is reconditioning the aluminum seat handles. Carol Tunner kept us moving with her yummy snacks each Saturday. Some of the Car 25 crew helped clean up the Mountain Ave.barn and the storage shed prior to building the third bay.

Finished and tested air lines on B end of Car 25. The silver valve in the center replaces troublesome footvalve shown on the floor.

Upcoming Car 25 tasks• Install air lines for sanders and water lines for lubing wheels.• Install power truck under car.• Install and test rebuilt controllers.• Finish interior wiring. • Move overhead lights to make room for new OH wire.• Purchase and install new overhead wire in shop.• Add metal trim to trap doors.• Restore grab handles on seats.• Prep car exterior and secure bids for painting.

Installer from Petersen Carpets fitting transit-grade vinyl flooring in Car 25 in September 2013.

Installing underlayment over new OSB subfloor in Car 25.

Interior lighting being tested for the first time last month. Note that TransFort's oldest bus has joined us in the Howes barn. Car 24

and 25 were the youngest cars in the City's original fleet.

Trolley Fare is published for members and friends of the

Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society.

FCMRS Staff:

President: Craig Stith, 970-498-0286

Vice-president: Dan Sapienza, 222-3224

Secretary: Carol Tunner, 484-3957

Treasurer: Asad Aziz, 310-5249

Directors: Asad Aziz, Bob Browning, Brent Carmack, Alan Cram,

Dan Hebbeln, Thea Sapienza

Department Contacts:

Advertising on Car 21: John Beckett, 493-1495

Car 21 maintenance: Chuck Bade, Tom Mulroney

Car 25 reconditioning: Al Jackson, Roger Smith, et al

Crew scheduling & Charters: Bob Browning, Thea Sapienza

Conductor & depot-agent training: Carol Tunner, Dan Sapienza

Email us: fcmrs1919@gmail.com

Maintenance of way: Al Jackson, Roger Smith, et al

Membership: Paula Shattuck

Motormen training: Bob Browning, Roger Smith, Thea Sapienza

Public relations: Wayne Sundberg

Souvenirs & depot management: Alan Cram

Trolley Fare & website: Al Jackson, wslcarshop@gmail.com

Volunteer coordinator: Bob Browning

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Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society P.O. Box 635 Fort Collins, CO 80522

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