SignalTraffic Forums

by **mcha9797** on Wed Mar 27, 2013 8:03 am

Is the countdown to none still in progress??

by **TacomaJoe** on Wed Mar 27, 2013 8:55 am

Is the countdown to none still in progress??

Timely question. As it happens, we are doing two this morning (S 84th & Park and S 84th & Yakima) which will leave us with five left. We're fat on NEMA cabinets and controllers but are short on conflict monitors. Need to stock up on CMU to build the shelf stock back up.

by **TacomaJoe** on Tue Apr 09, 2013 5:50 pm

I just noticed that our EF20 at S 27th & Yakima is 40 years old today. The oldest EF20 still running was installed at Center & "J" in JAN'59.

by **Crunge98** on Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:02 pm

TacomaJoe wrote:I just noticed that our EF20 at S 27th & Yakima is 40 years old today. The oldest EF20 still running was installed at Center & "J" in JAN'59.

54 years young :thumbsup:

by **John3250** on Tue Apr 09, 2013 10:06 pm

well the ET-300 units I have that date back to early 60 and early 70 after sitting for 15 + years hook then to the tester one at a time and they all work. Eagle Signal built some great controllers for the time(EF-20 EF-70 ) or maybe just good thought went into there units. You got to know all the ET-300/310 use tubes (5727) and step switches like the phone co used back them.
John3250

by **vaughnsimon** on Wed Apr 10, 2013 7:12 am

John3250 wrote:well the ET-300 units I have that date back to early 60 and early 70 after sitting for 15 + years hook then to the tester one at a time and they all work. John3250

You are just lucky! Those tubes and step switches took lots of maintenance compared to today's controllers. We had one tech who spent at least half of his time repairing and rebuilding ET-300 modules. Just for them, he had two benches and two testers.

The Automatic Signal step switch/tube controllers seemed to be more reliable, but perhaps that's just because we had fewer of them?

Also the Eagle LA-57 load switches were trouble. They would beat themselves apart. On opening a cabinet for a trouble call, our first action was always to look at the cabinet bottom for load relay parts. If you find any, you KNOW you have a bad load relay. Then your job was to find it.

Vaughn

by **John3250** on Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:20 pm

yes the Eagle relays was a problem all by them self had our inside signal tech use a type of glue on the screws to keey the relays together after we started getting parts in the controller cablnet. It was one of Eagles too cheep relays that gave us problems.

by **TacomaJoe** on Sat Apr 13, 2013 9:59 am

We had the same issue with the 3-pole relays in our cabinets. In the 80's we ran through all of them with Loctite and solved it.

by **vaughnsimon** on Sat Apr 13, 2013 10:57 am

TacomaJoe wrote:We had the same issue with the 3-pole relays in our cabinets. In the 80's we ran through all of them with Loctite and solved it.

Yep, we used red Loctite on the LA-57 relays, but that only solved part of the problem. The contacts would wear and snap, and you would find the pieces in the bottom of the cabinet. It was a rule that you pick up the stray parts when you changed a relay, because looking for those parts was always our first troubleshooting trick. The most dangerous problem was when the yoke broke between the two sides of the relay. That could cause some very "interesting" signal displays in those pre-conflict monitor days.

by **John3250** on Sat Apr 13, 2013 12:39 pm

yes very true even got to a point on a ET-300 8 phase to get green in both A and b phase at the same time

SignalTraffic Forums

Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Re: Then there were nine

Who is online