Chicago Day, Part Deux

I was out for Saturday of Chicago Day Weekend along with the rest of the Hicks Car Works blog team. I spent much of the day working on the 205, though I got to do some "fun stuff" too like help move the 308 and 309 out into the yard for photos and ride the Illinois Central MU cars on a few short test trips up and down the inspection pit lead. Most of the time spent working on the 205 was spent wire-wheeling. I did most of the remaining wire-wheeling above the belt rail, finishing off the letterboard at the west end and the remaining extra-width window posts towards the end of the car:Towards the end of the day, David Wilkins and I were able to extract the last remaining wooden end window from the car. While it was in Portland in the 1940's and 1950's, three of the car's six brass-frame end windows had been replaced by wood-frame ones. The replacement was haphazard; the car came to us with two wood windows at one end and one at the other. We obtained three "close" brass windows to replace the wooden ones (which, besides being incorrect, were junk) and installed those at the east end of the car some time back. The sole brass window remaining at the east end was removed and the paint stripped off of it at that time. On Saturday David and I were able to remove the wood-frame motorman's window at the west end of the car (at right, David unscrews the post cap before replacement and, afterwards, reinstalls the cap) and install the previously prepped brass window. The center window from this end was removed concurrently to be chemically stripped at a later time. More progress in the backdating department!