Compressor Closer

 This report will cover the last two days.  As usual, there's a lot of things I would like to include but have to leave out.

                                                                                 Wednesday

To start with, let's look at those tents I mentioned earlier.  (L) Two young men are out there in the boiling sun driving huge tent stakes into the ground with air hammers.  Just watching them made me feel old.

The biggest tent, near the entrance, is already up.  And there are lots more of these around the property, but enough of that. 

From our standpoint, the big news was starting work on the replacement compressor for the 36.  There's no room available inside the shop, so it was moved to a location alongside the shop at the east end, where AC, DC, and air are available.  This will work out fine.

Rod and Gerry Dettlof helped by moving the compressor from its location along Bruneau Drive to the barn.  First, Gerry lifts it on chains, (L) and sets it on a pallet.

 

Then the pallet is moved to a spot near the door to track 43, which is seldom used.

Work started on replacing some of the wiring, which was bad.

Also, I removed the air strainer from the old compressor, and disconnected the piping to the car.  This air strainer is a different design from the others.

 In the evening, let's take a stroll around the property, as usual.  Track 143 has been pulled, so we have a better than usual view of the 321 under its tarp.  This is an exciting step towards construction of the next barn, since of course the builders would find it difficult, if not impossible, to construct a barn over a yard full of cars.

Meanwhile, construction has started on our first storage building, as seen here.  By the time I left on Thursday, the roof had been installed.  It's going along quickly!

 

And here we look over some of the tents set up for Thomas. As mentioned earlier, the time to order tickets is now!

Thursday

On Wednesday I removed all of the repainted windows from their slots and set them up on sticks inside the car.  They had only white primer on the inside, but we now have the correct interior colors, so it's time to start painting them.

 

I also selected one of the first aid boxes Rich had made and painted it, as long as the paint was out.  It looks great!

Among other things, I worked on repairing one bad seat in the 36.  This design is much different from the later cars.  I won't bore you with the details, but I was having trouble figuring out how to remove the seat back.  Tim stopped by and looked at it.  It turns out that the key is to remove the outer end casting. 

Rod helped me again with the compressor, and all of the electrical work is now complete. The external wiring and its insulation were replaced, and we have some new insulators for the brush holders.

All sorts of other things are going on, of course.  For instance, the track guys are doing some last-minute tie replacement on the steam leads.  This is where the Thomas train will be loading and unloading, so it's important to get this done.