Black and Blue

Frank writes...

My trip out to IRM today mostly involved painting.  The primary goal was to get the south (R side) side sill and east (#1 end) bumper/anticlimber painted blue.  I was able to get this done though we are running low on Washington Blue paint.  The before photo:

And the after photo:

Note that on the second photo I used my camera's special "tarped car" filter.  Actually there was some switching going on in preparation for next weekend's Trolley Pageant, including bringing a string of freight cars over to the inspection pit track for inspection and lubrication before they're used in the demonstration freight train.

Anyway, after I was done with the blue paint I switched to black and put a first coat on the #1 end tack molding, which was still in primer (see previous post).  Thanks to Greg for helping to get everything set up for this.  And then to cap it all off I put a first coat of silver on the #1 end headlight bracket.  The train door at this end has not been repainted yet since we received the car from Brookins, so the door handle and grab iron are still inaccurately painted black, but otherwise this end of the car looks pretty much correct now.

At the end of the day I removed the #1 motorman's brake valve and took it to the shop for Rod to look at.  It had a noticeable leak around the stem gasket which we are hoping to fix.  Unfortunately the circular gasket between the upper and lower portions of the brake valve tore when I was removing it... rats.  I think we have more of these but we will need to dig them out.

And now for something completely different: one of the switch moves involved Milwaukee Electric snow sweeper B48, which is not commonly seen outdoors.  This car underwent a partial cosmetic restoration back in the 1980s, or maybe early 1990s.  It's an interesting piece of equipment, particularly with that big elephant snout on it.