I spent part of today helping Charlie Strong uncover and trace original lettering from the 451, which is in Barn 4 for some basic repair work and survey of condition. As delivered from St. Louis Car Company, cars 451-460 had modern Futura lettering, similar or identical to what the Union Pacific has used for the past 70+ years. When they went through the Wheaton paint shop at the age of about five years they were repainted with standard CA&E Railroad Roman lettering. While plans of exactly how to paint 451 and 460 have not been finalized, work is being done to record both types of lettering before all of the paint is stripped off. Below left, Charlie (right) shows Adam Robillard, who stopped by between Track Department jobs, the 451's original Futura number; below right the 1950's Roman number has been highlighted in marker prior to tracing.
During breaks from this job to go into the shop and warm up, I also helped with some work on the 319. Buzz Morisette was working on the car too - at left he is seen installing new glass in one of the side windows (a new pane of glass was also installed in one of the drop sash windows - Frank Sirinek did the glass cutting for both).
The hardest-working man in the department on Sunday was Jon Fenlaciki, who spent the entire day wire-wheeling and then cleaning and priming the step wells for the 409. Below left he is seen during a break in the action; below right the step wells are shown after completion of painting, with which Jon was helped by Greg Kepka.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Back to the Futura
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6 comments:
Randy, what details changed in rebuildings of 409 that would prohibit it from being repainted in the blue paint scheme? Unless its in the car dept's desires to have a 4 car matched train set, what stands in the way of repainting 409 in the blue, 451 in the red/gray with the common numerals/lettering like 431 and 460 from being repainted in the sans serif(futura)/UP style numerals as delivered? Just wondered....
sorry, meant repaint 451 as delivered.....rule G
Ben: Good to hear from you. I think I answered these questions in the comments to the previous post, "Plans for the CA&E Cars."
In additions to the changes mentioned in the "Plans for the CA&E Cars" comments, another modification made to 409 in 1956 was removal of the MG set and batteries and conversion of the lights to 600-volt power. While you might be able to backdate the other aspects of the modernization, albeit with a whole lot of work, restoring these features authentically would be impossible.
Ben: The modernization program for the Pullmans involved replacing the steel side panels below the belt rail (buttwelding the joints to forgo lap plates), replacing the original wood passenger window sash with aluminum bus sash, removing the battery lighting and M/G, replacing the straight/automatic air brake system with plain automatic and reupholstering the seats (removing the original lumbar roll/headroll design of the seat backs in the process).
Like Frank said, most of this stuff *could* be backdated at considerable effort and expense, but finding the proper parts for the air brakes and battery lighting would be almost impossible.
Sad irony is that, while all of the Cincinnatis were modernized long before the end, some of those Pullmans went to their demise unmodernized.
randy frank and scott, thanks for the education
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