Thursday, October 8, 2009

Time and tidying wait for no man

Wednesday I took a day off of work and went out to the museum to work on cleaning out the 4001 and 321 in preparation for those two cars being tarped and put outside, so that cars from the Trolleyville collection can be put indoors immediately. This should only be a temporary situation but the cars will still be inaccessible for a few months, and it seemed like a good time to clean out a lot of the "dead storage" materials. At left is the interior of the 321 after this tidying-up effort... there's still a lot of stuff in the car but most of it is related to the car's function as a workshop. Tools and other easily movable items will be moved out before the car is tarped, so that they will be usable over the winter.

After a lot of moving and sorting, attention turned to the roofs of the two cars. My father did some work on the 321's roof to install some roof covering, so that the tarp won't chafe and rip on a few currently-exposed sections of framing. I covered over the roof boards and trolley hook bolts on the 4001's roof with carpet; this car is now ready to tarp, as it is completely emptied of stored materials and the roof is about as snag-free as it's going to be.


Below is a picture of one of the trips we made to the container with the department truck, moving spare parts out of the 321. Ever wonder how we're able to keep this stuff going and restore cars that are just shells? Spare parts! As Bob Bruneau always said, "parts is parts!"

4 comments:

David Wilkins said...

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! It's the Hicks Car Company Yard Sale! Everything must go! Unbelieveable low prices! You won't believe your eyes!

Unknown said...

Just curious, would you guys look to sell anything to raise cash and free up barn space?

Also I know the new cars are in excellent condition, but how do they compare to the 308 and 309? Do you plan to quickly repaint the 36 and 319?

Randall Hicks said...

Seriously, you might wonder how we got so many parts from the 320, which is at Mt. Pleasant. When that car was completely rebuilt several years ago, much of it was entirely new construction, and they were left with several leftover parts they didn't want to store. Fred Perry unexpectedly offered them to me, so I took whatever would fit in my car. Old ceiling panels were too big, and may still be up in the ceiling of their barn.

So we have parts from the 308, 309, 310, a 311 series, 318, 320, and 321 in storage.

Randall Hicks said...

In reply to Joe:
You would need to talk to Nick. For anything on the permanent collection list, the answer is probably no.

We don't have firm plans yet on repainting the cars; that will wait until they get here and we have time to examine them thoroughly.