Winter News

In the spirit of holiday generosity, good cheer, and good will towards men, we'll start off today with what everybody else is doing. 

(L) Notice anything missing?  That's right, the coal bunker has been moved away from Barn 8.

And they have placed it over next to the steam leads, where it belongs.  The new connector track is barely visible in the foreground.  I suppose the crane will be reassembled for this use.

Tim is hard at work on the new ceiling panels.   He says that as best he can determine, they were originally striped with silver leaf, which appears to be gold under enough coats of shellac.  This doesn't seem like a feasible thing to reproduce, so gold striping is being carefully applied, and then coated with varnish.

 Shellac would require periodic recoating, varnish won't.  So this will look fine and stay bright and shiny.

Here's what that panel looks like when finished.

And everybody has been wondering about heating the pit with gas.  Here Jerry Lynn was working on finishing the gas piping.  The heater is behind him.

Here's the heater itself.  It will be on wheels, and connected to the gas supply with a flexible hose, so it can be moved around in the pit as needed.  With some tarps forming a tent overhead, this should provide plenty of heat.  Jerry says this is the same system used in the CTA shops and similar locations.

 

And Jim West was installing more decorations in one of the L cars to be used for the Happy Holidays train.  

And I spent the day in the 36.  I've decided that from now on all the window shade tracks should be stripped before painting, so here's a set of them.

And I'm painting the walls.  The luggage racks are really going to be a pain, with those wire meshes.  They're very hard to paint.

And a second coat of finish color on various parts of the walls.  The difference may be difficult to see in these pictures, but it's much more obvious in person.