Monday, January 3, 2011

New Arrivals, Cont.


Most of the day was spent on painting the ceiling of the 319, as seen here. It's going along well.

The cord hanger I'll take down and strip.




I also repainted two seat rest frames, and one remaining corner seat frame. Then more paint stripping in the vestibule. That gets old in a hurry. And I walked out to check on the 321's tarp. Everything seems fine, which is a relief. I also put some parts into storage.






This used to be a nice, quiet, friendly place -- until these two hoods showed up. I think Nick gave them a lift from somewhere up in Wisconsin. They're a couple of rough-looking customers, just hanging around and waiting to make trouble. Well, there goes the neighborhood. Thanks, Nick!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the updates on this work. You've made it look really great. Two questions:
1. Is the plan to also do the same work in the "main" compartment (or just the smoker?)
2. Stupid question, but since the power is on in the car, do you or can you use the heaters installed in the car?

Randall Hicks said...

Good questions!
1) Yes, I plan to do the main compartment, but not before this summer. It's generally in better shape and might go faster. However, it's also much harder to heat during the winter. Which leads to...
2) I have disconnected the heaters in all of the wood cars for safety. One fire was too many. I think the 319's heaters might be defective, but it doesn't matter. I don't want them to ever be operational. In the smoker, a single space heater is sufficient.

David Wilkins said...

This would be a good time to point out, that as the legal department, we're getting a lot of complaints about Randy's continued discussion of stripping. Randy, keep it clean!

Al said...

But David its a railroad group!

Anonymous said...

What is to become of the "Hoods" that you are refer to in your current posting. They look pretty well tied up in your recent posting scene.

Not much has been said about the Toledo Edison electric locomotive #1 that was obtained from East Troy. It sure looks odd in the current yellow paint - especially when compare to the previous color utilized at Toledo Edison. And what is the history of the locomotive if Frank could post something?

Randall Hicks said...

Frank is busy, so I'll try to answer. TE #1 was built for Toledo Edison in 1923 and operated there for many years; we're not sure when it was retired, but it was acquired by East Troy in 1997. Some restoration work was done there, but the project was never completed; they recently donated the locomotive to IRM. The hoods will be reinstalled once work under the hood is complete, I suppose. We're told that it's mechanically in good condition, and needs mostly body and fender work. As for paint, people have fancifully suggested North Shore, CA&E, and just about anything else you can think of. So stay tuned.

David Wilkins said...

I've seen the Glen argument applied to companies that did a lot of freight car building. Obviously, freight cars did not require as careful of craftsmanship that the passenger equipment did. It is allegedly one of the reasons St. Louis Car Co. did not do that much freight car building. Management preferred to focus on passenger cars to keep the quality up. Of course, in the long term, that proved to not be such a good idea...