Panic Mode

The past few days have been quite busy. We have a lot of inspection work and final prep to accomplish in a short time. On Monday and Wednesday this week I was doing inspection on the 319; the previous post by Frank details much of what had to be done. Next week the 309 will need the same treatment. I've been too busy to take many pictures.

This morning I pulled the car outside for some touch-up. When the sides were spray-painted, overspray got on various parts of the underbody, as perhaps you can see here. There's both the grey primer and the final red. Frank hopes to work on the underbody over the summer, but in the meantime, we wanted to paint over most of these places, which I did.

And here the car sits for a portrait.

I then had to shuffle the three cars so the 309 is at the door. It will be inspected next week, starting Monday if all goes according to plan. Here we see the 319 and 308 during the switch move. The 308 is now adjacent to the Lake Shore 150, two cars built in 1906 by Niles. The 308 has certainly had an easier life!

Then there were several other tasks. The interrupter for the buzzer circuit was missing a couple of parts, so I made new ones, helped briefly by Rod. I should have taken some pictures of the mechanism but didn't. It really seemed like a crummy design, and I wasn't sure it would ever work again. But I hopefully brought it out to the Museum and hooked it up, then pulled the cord. Amazingly enough, it buzzes! That's quite important for train operation. Then I worked on window hardware and did some more painting in the vestibule.

Finally, here we see Tim Peters using his motorized platform to work on the roof of the 1797. You'll notice that it uses wind power to get him where he want to go.