309/319 Report

No self-respecting Chicagoan would let a little cold weather deter him from attending a football game, for instance, and those of us who are more interested in railroads than sports are just as committed.  (Insert comment here.)   So there were several projects of various sorts being worked on today as usual, some of them outside.  The sun was shining, so our solar-heated barn was warm enough for roof painting.  I finished putting a coat of black on the north side of the car, lower roof, lower tack molding, and upper tack molding.  The back lighting makes it tough to photograph, but you'll just have to take in on trust, it looks nice.

After that, it was time for more work on the seats in the 309.  Here is the next new seat frame installed.

And after the cushion and arm rest are attached, it's ready to sit in.  It sure is nice to be able to remove the cable ties I was using to hold the seat backs together on the defective frames.

And then I started on another one.  The arrows point to places where the track had parts broken out of it, allowing the brackets on the seat back to come out.  I really don't know why so many of these were defective.  None of the other cars have problems like this on more than a single frame or so.  I wonder if this was caused by the firemen putting out the fire.   You may notice that this frame has a wooden shim between it and the wall.  I installed that several years ago because the wall behind it had some problems, but that has been reconsidered.  The shim will be removed and a better fix made to the mounting. 

Notice also that this frame has one of the cantilevered pedestals, which provide clearance for a motor hatch.  We have a couple of these from the 300, as part of the seat frame collection, but I prefer to keep the original pedestals attached to the floor whenever possible.

In any case, we all have much to be thankful for.  Have a happy Thanksgiving Day!