Great Northern GE 44 ton Center Cab Electric restoration

[NP317]

Creative. I like it.
RussN

[Glenn Brooks]

Wow, long 18 months since my last post… this month just started picking up again on the center cab rebuild.

Most all this summer, so far, has consisted of fitting and welding the window rounded panels to the original frame of the cab. By my rough count, I fitted 49 pieces - not counting rejects! - to fab up the window panels.

Huge amount of detail work fitting each piece, welding in place, grinding smooth the welded joints - filing the holes, grinding smooth, etc, etc….

Big lesson learned here: In retrospect, I should have laid up and machined complete, new, front, back and side panels, then welded the panels, with the included cut out window frames, over the outside of the original angle iron framing. Could even have riveted them in place, for that old fashioned look. This would have been a much cleaner and faster process, even with riveting. Two, three days tops, versus weeks of fitting, grinding, welding, more grinding….. oh well, super happy this part is done.

Next up, fit and rivet a couple more body panels to the frame, and build out the control panel in the cab. Add the hood end doors each side. Then OFF TO THE POWDER COATERER GUY! That will be a happy day.

[Glenn Brooks]

A quick note on making the rounded window frames: I used a piece of scrap 1/8” x6” flat bar to fashion the rounded frames. Then cut the corners with a 2.75” diameter hole saw. Finally milled the flat bits with an end mill and parted each piece with the band saw. This method made four corner moldings for each of four windows.

Using a hole saw was an ideal method for this thin stock…

Next time, I would be inclined to lay out the each entire front, back and side panels as whole pieces. Then rough cut the straight window edges with the plasma cutter and mill to exact dims the same way as above… the whole cab could be done with maybe only 6 pieces.

[Steggy]

...Then cut the corners with a 2.75” diameter hole saw...Using a hole saw was an ideal method for this thin stock…

Hole saw: the cutting tool with 1001 uses.

Hole saw: the means by which to mangle your parts in 1001 ways.

[Glenn Brooks]

Finished up some small details over the last several weeks. I wasn’t happy with undersized hinges I originally bought on line and installed to open the engineer’s doors on the cab. At the last minute, fabbed up more robust, shop made hinges. Used 1/4” hardened pins for the latch and 1/2” round stock for the hinge body.

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Hinges Turned out to be tricky to weld in place. The riveted sheet metal paneling was in the way.. But worked out in the end.

The other big success was turning a whole batch of door latch mechanisms to open and close the doors on the cab and engine compartments on the hood ends. Found some nice little, miniature door handles on line. But could not find a matching latch mechanism to fit the handles. So made up my own. The handles can be re-positioned and locked in convenient positions, so quite sophisticated for less than a $buck a piece.

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These consist of turning a simple 1/2” diameter barrel with 1/2” threaded studs on both ends to screw on the handles (inside and outside the door), and a crosswise 1/4” drift pin to latch the door shut to the frame. Welded a small 90* catch on the frame to hold the latch pin in position. Works a treat.

A second job was to turn another dozen or so, tiny, one sided latches for the 12 hood end doors that get mounted on the hood ends. 3 doors each side, two hood ends. These doors will display the same 2” door handles as the cab doors. So 14 door latches in total. A special challenge was threading the 6 mm x1 metric thread for the handles. Turns out a metric threading die was the simplest way to thread the shafts.

Small parts - big part of the project. I couldn’t move forward until these door latches and hinge things were resolved. Very happy now to wrap up this part of the rebuild.

Maybe I’ll turn some hinge pin caps for the top of the drift pins out of 1/2” found stock and sweat them onto the tops of the pins holding the cab doors in place. Initially I just spot welded a bulb on top of each pin to keep them from falling through the hinge. Doesn’t look very clean… nice, sculptured jewelry on top of each pin would be more elegant.

[Glenn Brooks]

Here’s a couple of pics of the hood end door latches. Very simple mechanism, designed to rotate a latch behind the door jam to hold the door closed.

For simplicity , I decided to use cap screws as the latch part. Finding standard flat latches with the square hole s in the end, separately, in this scale is nearly impossible. So cross drilling the barrel and inserting or screwing a pin or small, hardened cap screw seems to be the way to go.


Basically the same design as the cab door latches, except the hood end engine room doors only need one handle on the outside of the compartment.

I used cap screws because I have a plentifory of them in the shop, and not enuf long drift pins.

Glenn

[Glenn Brooks]

Came across some old photos. Here’s a before and after college on the restoration - 3 years in the making. Wow. Time flies.

[Glenn Brooks]

Spent the afternoon swapping bodies and lifting the Center Cab onto an engine stand. Happy to be able to finish the work standing upright - just like the big boys.

[Glenn Brooks]

Conquered a big psychological hurdle today- decided how to mount the access doors on each hood end. Literally after 9 months of delay ( partially due to back injury) finally settled on hanging the access doors flush with the body. So milled the door blanks down to 1/16”th clearance to sit within the existing frame and body openings and fit the slip on hinges on three doors. Seemed to work well and looks good.

The two, large, forward doors open to expose the engine compartment. The smaller door, adjacent to the center cab, allows access to the battery compartment.

Door latches up next

9 more to go…