36 Report

Back home again in Barn 8, it was a good day for more painting. Al Reinschmidt was working with me again, and we now have about half of one side of the 36 painted with the first finish coat, both blue and grey. One finish coat is all I'll do until we can get the car where I can pull it outside easily for better lighting. Meanwhile, it's going well. The tack molding at the top of the letterboard is painted with gloss black also. So we take turns with the various colors.

Al had started stripping paint from one of the side doors, as you can see here, but it's more convenient to remove the door and take it to the shop for stripping and repainting.

All parts of the door, both inside and out, will be painted blue. And it looks like this metal plate is rusted out at the bottom, so we will probably need a replacement made. Al started the process by removing the various metal parts.

The original door hardware is an interesting design. The interior door handles fold down due to the tight clearances in the narrow vestibules. This feature is unique to the 36, at least among preserved CA&E cars, I believe.

And while I had the gloss black out, I painted the cutout valves for the brake and control pipe hoses on the 319. Somebody at Brookins, perhaps Gerry himself, had decided it was a good idea to paint all these valves with safety yellow, but it's not authentic, not necessary, and I thought it an eyesore. So a while back I cleaned them up as best I could and painted them with primer. They should probably be just bare metal, but that's hard to achieve without disassembling everything. So black is the next best choice, and they probably won't be glossy very long!