Exercise Is Good For You

Over the past two days I spent most of my time working on the roof of the 277. I tried to detach the trolley base from the boards, but one bolt could not be loosened, so I finally decided to cut up the trolley boards. My saber saw works better than I expected. I had tried drilling out the screw heads, but the boards were still fastened tightly to the saddles. To remove the base itself, I'll need at least one helper, so that will come later.

The good news is that many of the tongue and groove boards uncovered so far are in good shape and may not need to be replaced. I know that will change as I move farther back.


Compare these photos to a "before" picture here, taken at about the same location. This work is harder than it looks, believe me. The wood is too rotten to be used in service, but not rotten enough to be removed easily. Those ladders on the side of the IT cars are a real advantage. By now I could probably climb up and down in the dark - but I won't!

By the way, the two longitudinal pieces shown by the yellow arrows are of interest. They serve as supports for the radiator cooling coils for the air conditioning system, distributing the weight across the roof. As you can see, the one on the right is almost rotten out. As long as they're not being used, and the car isn't running, I don't think the system will collapse, but fixing them is going to be a challenge.

I also recaulked the one remaining leak in the barn roof over the 277.

After I'd had enough of working on the roof (or at least my back had had enough) I turned to a minor repair job on the 321. Frank will letter the car next spring, but the letterboard had a small section that had rotted out, as shown here. I needed to fix this before lettering started.

First I used my chisels to square up the hole, and chamfer the rabbet (which of course you can't see.) Yes, I know these pictures are blurry, but it's difficult to get good pictures in the barn. I then made a patch piece in the woodshop.



Finally, the patch piece was installed, and painted with white primer. I just need to let this dry, apply some filler, sand it down, and repaint it.




In other exciting news, Dave Diamond finally received the ceramic side panels for the Salem diner. Here he is installing them. When this is finished, it will be a dramatic improvement.







And work continues on Barn 11 - the south side panels are complete, and the north side is about 1/3 done.