Orange you glad you came out in this weather?

It may have seemed like May on Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon we were back to February. What started as a nice day turned, by about 4pm, into wind, sleet and snow. That didn't deter opening day operations, though: IT 101 ran successfully all day (just getting back into the barn before the snow flew). The department is planning on running a different electric car each operating day this month, weather permitting - see the calendar on the IRM home page for details.

In other exciting news, the very first of the final orange paint went onto the 205 today! Well, went on to a part of the 205 anyway - the new Hicks-built doors got a first coat of orange in the warmth of the shop. We cracked open the gallon of Centari orange that we obtained through Jon Fenlaciki as an add-on to his order for orange paint for the 65 for the first time; it turns out that it seems to brush on pretty well! The fan of sticks visible in the background of the below photo are the "window sticks" that will hold the window panes in.


Once that was done, I briefly helped Tim Peters and several others mount a couple of heavily rebuilt side doors back on Chicago Rapid Transit 1268 (below left), and then Rod Turner drove me over to container row to look through the department's store of spare retrievers. We picked out a pair of OB models similar to what the 205 had when in service in Terre Haute and brought them back to the shop to be refurbished later (below right). All in all, a successful day!