The Locomo Shop-- Part Two

Now if we cross over to the southeast corner of the building. We find a door that will take you to wheel shop, which I will talk more about later. This side of the locomotive shop contained the Electrical department that was up to ran halfway up the building on the East end there was a big degreasing tank that used Chlorothene Nu to degrease the diesel locomotives main generators and traction motors. We used to go here to degrease oil filters that had to be soldered, the machinists were here quite regularly on Fridays to clean their tools. We would watch from around the walls of the tank, it looked like a big cloud inside, until something that was covered in grease was lowered into the tank with the overhead electric crane that traveled the length of the shop, from the cloud will emerge the chemicals that removed the grease, it looked like a rainstorm coming out of the cloud to strip the grease off of the object in the tank. When removed, the item was spotless, no grease, and quite hot from the reaction. Further up the shop floor the Electricians worked at rebuilding the main generators, and traction motors for the diesel electric locomotives. The rest of this side of the shop was divided between the Machinists and Air Brake department, the machinists had all their lathes, milling machines, shapers, and drill presses. The Air Brake department had a room there, where they did laping on some of the more delicate parts of the air brake valves, they also made air brake hoses for coupling between cars. That concludes the two side bays of the Locomotive Shop, and as I mentioned previously, the apprentice school was above the fan room in the northwest corner of the shop, further down were the offices for the Boiler Shop, Pipe Shop, and Sheet-Metal foremen, underneath their offices was the Blue Room where machinists worked on Governors for the diesel engines. In the southeast corner by the degreaser was the First Aid Office and further up this side were offices for the Electrical department, and further up offices for the Machinists and Air Brake supervisors. There was also wash rooms, four of them in each quadrant of the building. The center bay had 36 pits where the locomotives were worked on look first two pits on the west end of the building were where locomotives were brought in to the shop, there was a huge electric crane that could pick up loads of 250 tons and was used strictly for picking up the locomotives with their wheels disconnected and moving them down the shop to another pit, where they were lowered onto blocking that supported them, and they were ready to be stripped. The wheelsets were picked up later by another crane and taken down the shop floor to where the truck gang worked. Also part of the shop floor near the middle was an area where the Diesel Mechanics rebuilt the diesel engines. At the east end there was a large lye tank where other large components were brought for cleaning by a character named lye tank Andy. There was also a tool crib in the middle of the shop where you could get the specialized tools for the work you were doing. I have posted three pictures in the top one shows the transition from steam to diesel and was taken by Nicholas Morant from John Gardens book Canadian Pacific. The next picture shows a steam locomotive being moved down the shop floor by the big crane. The last picked your shows, the West end of the locomotive shop with the two large doors were the locomotives were brought into the shop for servicing, and there was a track that ran along the west side of the shop to the foundry.