The Little Joe is basically operational. Right now it has a lot of leaks in the air piping, which are tough to access because a lot of the piping is mounted to the underside of the carbody over the running gear frames. Because of the locomotive's limited usefulness, repairing the air leaks has not been a priority so it has not seen use in recent years.
IRM has run 1500v equipment, including the Little Joe and both South Shore and IC MU cars, on many occasions. As mentioned in a previous post, this equipment can operate just fine on 600v, it's just a lot slower than it would be on 1500v. The operational problems with running 1500v cars are twofold: first, air compressors. Only being able to charge your air at half the normal rate is a real safety problem! Fortunately this is a pretty easy fix, as the museum has just swapped out the original 1500v pumps with 600v pumps on the cars that are usable for service. Second, on South Shore cars you need the MG set to charge the batteries so you can get low-voltage power for the control system. This isn't an issue on the IC MU cars, which have GE PC control, or on the Little Joe, but it has made it difficult to run the South Shore cars consistently for long periods.
In the end, though, what has really kept all of this equipment out of regular service isn't its voltage but its current collection: IRM's overhead isn't equipped for pantograph operation, and cars with pantographs are operated only with risk and difficulty. The museum is slowly rebuilding its overhead network for pantograph operation but it will take time before these cars can be run consistently.
Frank Hicks
