Sunday, June 12, 2011

RPO Speedwagon

This weekend IRM was celebrating Railway Post Office (RPO) Days with our RPO car and retired railway clerks. I didn't take any pictures because our friend and ace photographer Chuck Amstein was there. He has sent me a collection of pictures which I'll post as soon as I have a working computer at home.



The 309 and 319 were running in revenue service again both days. Here on Saturday are the cars, with Dan Buck the motorman and Randy Allegrezza the conductor, seen helping passengers off the train. Everything seems to have worked well.







In the woodshop, we have several people helping and watching as the Berlin sander works its magic on a newly-built door. You have to see this machine in operation to appreciate it.


I worked some more on the 36, stripping off more paint. Get ready for a boring series of pictures nearly identical to this one. And I took the defective contactor to the shop for disassembly and cleaning.






In other news, the B&G crew were hard at work on the street project; here we see the material being graded in preparation for new asphalt.



And the track crew was joined by a group from MTM who came out to help. Here they are in the process of regrading South Junction. In the middle, Tom Hunter provides direction. Thanks, guys!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"You have to see this machine in operation to appreciate it."

OK then, if you would please, make us a short video and post a link to it? Sounds like a good thing. Perhaps as part of a tour of the IRM woodshop machines?

Anonymous said...

Randall,
Inqiring minds want to know which of the many colors schemes of the C, A & E are you going to put back on the #36 when you get all the layers of paint off?

Ted Miles
IRM Member

Frank Hicks said...

Here's a video of the sander in action, though the video definitely doesn't do it justice. In person it is a real cacophony of noise, for one thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYMAyxTbAOY

Joel Ahrendt said...

You just wanted to use that word, didn't you? I do agree, it's something to behold when they have the machine running.