Saturday, March 7, 2015

In the Spring

Well, that was quick!  Winter suddenly turned into spring, as often happens around here.  The sun was shining, the snow started to melt, and so:

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of....

Actually, I don't quite remember.  You'd have to ask Mr. Tennyson.  My thoughts, on the other hand, quickly turned to finishing the roof of the 319.  I want it to be one of the primary service cars this year, again. 
The first step is to put on a final coat of black canvas paint.  With the sun out, it was nice and warm up on the roof.  I threw off my sweater and worked in a short-sleeved shirt.  This canvas will be as water-tight as anything can be.  I didn't get to the sides or ends, but those can be done later.  The main thing is to finish the center, so the saddles and running boards can be installed, starting next time.


After that was done, I made myself a guide for marking the location of the saddles, since there's no guarantee that the seam in the canvas is centered.  The saddles need to be centered over the carlines, and that's not easy to do.





Let's see what's happening with the 24.  Tim was repairing many of the seat frames, filling the gaps with epoxy.


Two of the fancy new marker lights have been temporarily installed on the end of the car, and are quite impressive.  Several things need to be done for the final installation.




But while we're here, we have an interesting view of the motorman's cab.  This is the smaller of the two cabs.  

And as usual, lots of other things were going on that I didn't have time to record.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Folks,
A local man from San Francisco and Sacramento, CA left behind a house full of railroad books, paper and stuff. 14 boxes of it are going to the Illinois Railway Museum's Strayhorn Library. i thought you would like to hear the news.

Other museums getting stuff are the Western Railway Museum, the Orange Empire Railway Museum and the New York Central Railroad Historical Society in Indiana.

Ted Miles
WRM Library and Archives Dept

Randall Hicks said...

That's great, Ted. Thanks for the information!

Anonymous said...

Randy, that reminds me of days spent atop 308 in the Indy yards!

Well done.
. . . Jan Girardot