Operations and Door Day

Well I have been forgetting my camera a lot, but today I remembered it so I decided to go nuts. Today was the second day of regular operation for the 308-309 since the 309's completion; yesterday was the first but none of the Hicks Car Works crew was out. The train was run yesterday by Stan Wdowikowski and today by Jim Nauer, both very capable people we are lucky to have in operations at IRM. The only problem was that one of the traps in the 308 is pulling out of the bulkhead, which will be fairly simple to fix, and a few minor air leaks, which will be more annoying to fix. I took a couple of photos:











On the left, the train coasts through the "plant" at the west station track throat, while on the right the train accelerates eastbound over Boot Creek Bridge. Those cars really stand out among all the greenery! And for something different, I even took a video:

The best that can be said regarding quality is that it's slightly better than nothing, but keep in mind that I shot this using my point-and-shoot Kodak camera without a tripod. This shows the train westbound passing "Big Tree" across from the station. (I have heard that there is a new "Big Tree" location but I refuse to believe it, even though the tree itself has been gone for years!)

I spent most of my day on the 205, but started out by lettering an ammo box that Stan was kind enough to donate for use with the 308-309 handles. This will be locked up for use by future motormen operating the cars.

Back to Door Day on the 205; I decided to devote my efforts to window sticks, the little trim pieces that hold the glass in place on the car's wooden doors. When the car was acquired a lot of the windows had been broken, and Bob Bruneau led an effort to replace broken windows. These were held in with whatever window stick scraps could be found, so when my father built the new doors for the 205 a year and a half ago I asked him to run off some extra window sticks. Today I put those extras to use, cutting sticks for the lower windows on both of the closed-off door leaves at the southwest corner of the car (pictured) as well as for the lower window on one of the door leaves at the southeast corner of the car:
This project was made more difficult by the fact that the window sticks were made out of rare "ironwood" which did not go well with the finishing nails I was trying to drive through it. Note that visible through the door are the trolley hooks for the car, which were previously cleaned up and painted in preparation for installation when we mount roof boards. After this I decided to remove the drop sash that had been installed by Portland in the upper-left window of the closed-off door pair. I'm not sure what the purpose of this was, as the drop sash itself is probably about 6" wide and 24" tall, but it looks a little strange and certainly isn't accurate to the car's Indiana configuration. Shown below are before-and-after photos of this removal (before shot from inside the car, after shot from outside).

















And finally, a gratuitous shot of the newly-installed North Shore Line sign at the corner of Central & Railroad Avenues:
So now that I've made an undying enemy of anyone with a dial-up connection, I promise to go easy on the photos next time... or at least to try.