The Ornamental Eaglelux Project

After more than a year sitting in storage, I finally had the chance to begin restoring the Eaglelux. Here's the end result after a couple weeks of work. When I originally got the signal, it got damaged in shipping (all the reflectors broke along with the green lens). The signal itself was in ok shape. A couple of holes had been drilled and the signal had a odd paint job off flat black and gold. The latches and hinge pins were also painted gold.

Anyway, I completely disassembled the signal and stripped out all the rotten gasketing and repainted it. After it's new paint job, new 1/4" nylon rope was used as replacement gasket material. The original latches and hinge pins were painted gold to cover up the tarnish but the paint itself was looking worn so I cleaned up each metal part with a wirebrush. The 14-24 screws holding in the hinge and the latches were also cleaned up. The other 10-24 brass screws were replaced with new equivalents.

The broken glass reflectors were removed and the reflector cages were given a coat of silver paint. After painting I adapted some aluminum reflectors I bought to the old reflector mounts. The two intact lens were given a scrubbing, the cracked green lens was replaced with a Crouse Hinds T-3 green for the time being.

The original cloth wired sockets were set aside and I used the three newer sockets that came with the aluminium reflectors as a replacement for now. I might have the original socket rewired but the replacement sockets are fine for now. I also installed a terminal block bracket and terminal block and grounded everything. The signal was originally ungrounded and had wirenut connections inside.

The signal is shown here more or less complete during testing.