Fall for IRM

It was a beautiful fall day at IRM. I thought about trying to take some pictures of the various cloud formations passing by, but there was too much else to do. I checked out the tarp on the 321 in Yard 14 and the container, and all is well.

This seems like an opportune time to clean and check all the triple valves. I'll post some more pictures as they are disassembled. In the 309, the valve is located under a seat frame, as seen here. The M2A is mounted so that the parts move horizontally. The 308's valve is under the car.

The 319 has an M2B triple. It's mounted so that the parts moved vertically, and if there's no air it would tend to fall into the release position. I'm not sure if there's any advantage to one mounting or the other; when air is on it probably doesn't make any difference.

Once in a while a streetcar motorman will get confused and start going around the loop in the wrong direction. (Actually, of course, this happens if the streetcar line is blocked for some reason. So it seemed like a good excuse for a picture.)

I started working on repainting the main compartment in the 319. I'm thinking about trying to remove all the paint from the molding strips in the ceiling, where it tends to peel for some reason.

Here's a picture of the wall before I started sanding. The marks on the wall are gouges caused by the seat back coming out the frame. This one walkover seat is not original; it was installed in 1953 when the oval window at this location was rebuilt. And it seems to never have worked very well.

David and some old friends of his from Kentucky were visiting. I also met a couple of visitors from Seashore. So a good time was had by all. As usual, there were many other projects going on, too many to list. And preparations for the Train of Terror are in full swing. You won't want to miss it!