[Robin Craig]

I am blessed with access to a full sized tractor with pallet forks which makes a huge difference in being able to shunt the units in and out of the shop.

They we placed on pallets and then some extra pallets underneath to provide a stand off from the snow and ice of winter. Temporary covers over the top keeps the weather out.

Over Christmas I had time to leave them in our shop over the holiday and left them dry out and we cleaned out the hulls of many years of debris.We found many trinkets and had everything in cardboard boxes and I was struggling with how to deal with the myriad of parts that a job like this generates and how they would be inventoried.

We decided that the rear car would be the best to start with and Gerry has stripped it down and removed the drive train and track which then gave access to the underside of the hollow structural steel (HSS) chassis and the bolts that secured it to the rear car. We decided as the chassis is going to have to be made new we would doing any grinding underneath and not mark the tub which is aluminum. The underside of the tub had been coated with a rocker guard type of material likely to prevent abrasion from track thrown debris in use.

The track is a jointed track with a simple bolted and hinged connection. The axles butt up to the inside of the chassis and a bolt keeps it snug and located. There is a basic track tension mechanism in the sides. The front and rear cars drove from opposite ends, so there is a shaft running the full length underneath with a hanger bearing assembly along the way and a simple differential unit that couples to the axle with the drive sprockets. The shafts are connected with a strange tapered fastener with a nut n the end. Many f these did not come apart easily and were destroyed. The pattern piece that was saved will go to our machinist Andy for him to make some new ones for the rebuild.

Sadly Gerry has been doing most of the work as I have been working nights on the Township plow truck, but I can tell you Gerry is much faster than me when he works and is so much more skilled at least I know my hours of plowing is paying for his labour. That is just the way the cookie crumbles, but in the end progress is being made.