Wood, glass and steel

I managed to get a lot of work done on the 205 today; the weather was absolutely perfect, about 70 degrees and sunny all day. I started off working on the two new doors. Last weekend, David Wilkins and I had test-installed the glass in the first door during a break in the operating meeting action, and today I installed all but a couple of the "window sticks" - the trim strips that hold the glass in place - on that first door. A few of the shorter window sticks had been lost at some point so I made a few more and primed them; these will be installed next week. Jeff Brady gave me some instructions on glass cutting, which I had never done before, and I was able to cut a piece of glass to fit for one of the windows in the second door. Both doors are pictured below left; the upper window in the left door is the only one yet to be done, and I plan to procure glass for this during the week. Once this is completed, both doors can be installed! Below right, the Michigan Electric 28 crew, L-R: Jeff Brady and Norm Krentel work on a test installation of roof Masonite while blog reader Walt Stafa gives me the finger.

After this, I built a doorstop for the 205 for after the door leaves are installed. This will be placed in the step well of the car and will keep anyone from pushing the doors open to gain access to the car; a similar system is used on some of our other streetcars. The carpet will protect the finish on the insides of the new doors.Finally, I got out the two retrievers that we had fished out of a parts container a few weeks ago, needle-chipped and wire-wheeled them, and spray-painted the upper surfaces of the retrievers. Readers from other museums note: the 205 originally had Ohio Brass catchers, and while the retrievers pictured are similar, we would be interested in obtaining a pair of (working or non-working) correct-type OB catchers for the 205. If anyone has a couple of spare OB catchers please contact me - thanks!