319 Report

Another productive day at IRM means we have new photos to look at.  First, let's see what other people are doing.

Henry Vincent is making good progress on the train door for the 36.  The new rail and stile patches have been fitted and glued in place.  They will need to be trimmed to size at the bottom, and this is presumably a job for multiple hands.  Anyhow, it's always nice to see that progress has been made while I've been busy with other things.  

And this is what it will look like when the kickplate is attached.  There is also a wooden drip rail below the kickplate to be made, but that's not a major task. 

 

And of course Tim Peters is still hard at work on the 1024.  He needs to replace the ends of the roof, and discovered something interesting.  I hadn't seen this before and neither had he.  The curved ends of a railroad roof are typically constructed with two layers of thin (~ 1/4") boards; anything thicker is hard to bend.  On the 1024 this problem is brilliantly made easier by taking a thicker board, about 5/8" thick, and resawing it in two for most of its length.  Here are some of the new boards Tim has made.

 Here's what it looks like when installed.

 The roof will take a lot of work, of course, and Tim is making good progress on this daunting task.

Now it's back to the 319.  The only real structural problem in the main compartment is that part of the ceiling had come loose and bowed down.  I must have a picture of what it used to look like somewhere.  I inserted a couple more screws and then removed the clamp, and it seems to be holding its shape just fine.  There is a noticeable gap between the panels, which I started filling with glue and caulk. 

And since the old clamp was now free, I used it to attach the original patch plate at this location under the hip.  It's at a larger angle than I would have chosen, because it was designed for clamping vertically from wall to wall across the car, but it works fine.

It takes awhile, but after filling the joint now looks like this.  I need to let it set up for a day or two, and on Saturday I should be able to make a final fill, sand it down, and start painting.

I then painted any parts of the ceiling still unpainted with first primer.

On the subject of diners, Nick was driving through Texas yesterday and happened to pass "Trolly373" (sic) along I20, so he called up Frank and asked him about it.  I had it listed as "probably doomed" which it probably still is, but it's nice to know the body is in existence.  We're always glad to get updates on the status of any diners we have listed, and particularly information on new actual-railroad-car diners you may come across.