Maintenence-OR what we do when the Pikes Peak Cog Railway is closed

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Maintenance

One of the things we get a kick out of here at the Pikes Peak Cog Railway is the question frequently asked by friends and visitors: "What do you people do all winter?" Well, in reality, the winters are actually busier than the summers; although we only run one trip a day in the winter (and up to 12 in mid-summer), our mechanics are up to their elbows in grease, diesel fuel and train parts. We defer all major maintenance on the trains until things slow down. In the mid-summer, we have our hands full running eight daily departures of up to twelve trains total to the top of the Peak. But when things begin to slow down, the real dirty work begins...and dirty is no joke!!

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There are many projects we do every winter. In addition to the rigorous routine maintenance every unit receives, we do things like changing cog wheels.

The steel tires on a cog railway wear very slowly, but the cog wheels do not. (The tires or wheels only center the units so the cog wheels properly mesh with the rack rail and the other important job they perform is bearing the weight of the cars.) We measure the wear on all units every year, and when the wear is too great, they must be either rotated or changed. As they only wear on the downhill side of the teeth (and the rack rail wears only on the uphill side), they can be turned (as can the rack rail) after a certain amount of wear has occurred.

Here you can see how the uphill-facing teeth on the rack rail has worn (mushroomed or flattened).

To turn or change is a long and time-consuming process involving draining all fluids, detaching fuel, electric and air lines, disconnecting the drive shafts and lowering the cog assembly out of the train. Then the tires must be removed and the cog wheels (two per axle) are pulled off and then are either changed or rotated. A well-trained and experienced crew of four can replace or turn a cog wheel (and drop and put back its associated axle) in two weeks. This means that a small railcar takes a month and a large railcar takes two months.

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Just to give you an idea of what other things we do, here are some older projects:

A major project for 2005/2006 off-season (November through April), was the conversion of Unit #25 (214 passenger) to a Voith transmission/braking system (see description below) . This project cost close to one million dollars. We have a Swiss engineer who oversaw the project (Mr. G. Guler from Stadler-Bussnang AG in Switzerland), with help from Voith of Germany. Mr. Guler as well as Stadler have been instrumental in keeping the Railway current with the state-of-affairs in the world of rack railways as the vast majority of rack railways are located in Switzerland.

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For the 2004-2005 season, we converted unit #24 to a Voith transmission/retarder. Originally, all our twin-unit, 214-passenger railcars were outfitted with a transmission from Twin Disc of Racine, Wisconsin and a retarder (brake) from Voith of Germany (there are four driving axles on each twin unit so there are four engines and transmissions on each unit). The original Voith retarders are now obsolete so we first made this conversion on units #18 and #19 in 1996/. 1997 and 1997/1998. This is an extremely costly process: the transmissions alone are about $125,000 each. The process takes from October through May and involves a great deal of time and effort by our team of mechanic/engineers.

The pictures below only begin to tell the story.

Here is the middle of a twin-unit train. Note the bellows which connect the two cars. First, we must remove the bellows and disconnect the electronic cabling, etc. which enable a single engineer to operate each railcar. Please refer to the Swiss Trains section for more on the history and operation of our Swiss railcars.

Here is the uphill car of Unit #25. You can see the hole where the bellows was. It is sitting on four large air jacks as well as a series of ties. The bogie (wheel/axle/truck/gearbox assembly) for the uphill portion has been rolled forward and the rear bogie is being worked on. We are turning the cog wheels in the pictures below.

Here is the uphill bogie. If you look carefully, you will see that there are two axles; the (mostly hidden and in the rear) pony axle (no cog wheels; this axle is only for stability and weight distribution) and in front is the driving axle. From left to right, there is the tire (wheel), the ratchet brake (with springs on top), the cog wheels (hidden by a shroud here), the gear box and the other tire.

Here you see the downhill driving axle which has been dropped out of the bogie. One tire and the ratchet brake hub, springs and assembly has already been removed. Mechanic Steve Houser is preparing to remove the ratchet brake from the axle. In the foreground is the tire, the gearbox and then the two cog wheels (the steel rods are inserted into the ratchet brake which is mounted directly on the axle).

This cog work is not something that is part of the new Voith transmission installation; it just so happens that the cog wheels need to be turned ( after a certain amount of wear the wheel can be turned; after the other side wears down it must be replaced) and this is an opportune time. In the photo above, machinist Lance Wheatley is profiling a tire. The tires on ordinary railroads also provide motive power, but on cog trains they simply carry the load. Still, after thousands of trips, our tires develop wear and need to be profiled (take the groove out so the there is a slight downward angle..not flat) as do tires on mainline locomotives. There is a short section on wear at the end of this page.

Back to the Voith conversion, the underside of the train needs quite a bit of modification in order to accommodate the new transmissions. Here, a wall has been cut open to enable the Voith transmission to fit. Incidentally, the transmission is directly mounted to a Cummins diesel engine.

Here you see some tools that are used. A grinder, a socket set, a small welder and in the background, one of the air jacks used to lift the car body.

We hope that this has given you an idea of why our "off-season" is so busy for our full time employees. Other "projects" for this time of year are: removing, rewinding ( done by GE in Denver) and replacing the generators and traction motors in one of the 80-passenger railcars (see Swiss Trains for more detailed info on these units); working on the worn-out axle of an older GE unit (#11-see the latter part of the History page for information about these locomotives) that is now used primarily for work duties, and of course we do a large amount of preventative maintenance which must also be completed in the few short months (January, February and March) when we are closed.

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We hope that gives you an idea of some of the work it takes to run the Pikes Peak Cog Railway. We'll update this page as we get more pictures!