Wrapping things up

On Sunday I was able to spend the afternoon finishing up prep on several areas of the 205, defined as completing Bondo and sanding work and priming them with Rustoleum. This included the car's southwest corner post (see right); the bottom ends of all of the recently-installed post caps (below right); two-thirds of the angled dash panel at the east end of the car (below right); and the remaining portions of the letterboard at the east end of the car.











This work is more time-consuming than it looks, but the end result is acceptable, particularly given how badly rusted-through many of these components were to begin with. I also reinstalled a wooden spacer that holds one of the west end windows in place and went through the car putting away tools and closing everything up before my job largely takes me away from IRM for the next few months.

In other news, more fresh paint has shown up on the Cleveland PCC, and there was a large crew of Car Department workers including Jeff, Dan, Greg, Frank, and Joe working on North Shore streetcar 354 just a few feet down the aisle from the 205 in Barn 7. They were able to check over much of the car's complicated electrical control and interlock system with the intention of testing the car's overall electrical/mechanical condition as well as its ability to navigate the museum's trackwork with its compromise-profile wheels. At left, Jeff and Frank are looking over the car's controller while Joe looks on.