Beehive of Activity

There was a lot happening today, much of it in preparation for Members Day - ahem, Museum Showcase Weekend. One thing that had nothing to do with Members Day was the revenue operation of the 308 and 309. The cars seemed to run fine all weekend with nary a problem, today operated by our illustrious crew caller, Jim West.


I spent most of my day working on the 205. The first order of business was to sand down the rough spots in the paint and re-spray them. As seen at right, these were pretty numerous due to my lack of skill in spray-painting, but by the end of the day the situation had been rectified and the car not only had a nice smooth coat of primer, but had lost that unsightly newspaper masking.

I did some work on other areas of the 205 as well. I cleaned off and spray-primed the switch group covers under the car, as seen at left. At some point coming up I can spray-paint these black, which will help the appearance of the car considerably. On this side of the 205 the switch group boxes are the only really obvious under-floor equipment besides the trucks, on which I haven't decided exactly what to do. They'll need to get painted black one way or another though.

I also did some Bondo work - at left is seen the impressive amount of Bondo applied today to the bottom of the second window post from the west end left-side door - and some wire-wheeling. The corner post at the northeast corner of the car was wire-wheeled, as was some more of the anticlimber at the west end.

Late in the day, an exciting development occurred - the Return of the Tangerine Flyer! The 277 made its return to the high iron today after some inspection work by crew of Car Department workers, but with an improvement over its previous appearance last October: this time observation car 234 was in tow! The three-car train made quite a striking appearance on the railroad; two car line trips and one main line trip were made. The latter was the first time the 234 has ever been on the museum's main line east of Seeman Road, as the railroad was extended to its current terminus since the last time the 234 had operated on the main! Weather permitting, this train will be operating this coming Saturday, the 19th - so don't miss it!