Shuffling the Deck

You might think that there isn't much happening at IRM during the week, such as a Tuesday in the middle of March.   You would be wrong.

Now that the electrical work is complete in Barns 13 and 14, the contractor has returned to Barn 8 and is making good progress installing the outlets along the walls.  But let's not get in his way.

 I'm mostly working on the #1 vestibule of the 36.  Scraping and sanding the various pipes and inaccessible surfaces is time-consuming.  The paint on the vestibule cover was especially bad for some reason, so I took it to the shop for stripping.  

Be careful, there's wet paint over on some of the parts being restored by the Coach Dept.   Now that's what I call a mirror-like finish!   Why don't my paint jobs ever turn out like that?  Actually, of course, these are newly-ordered mirrors for the Pullman parlor cars.

Let's take a break and check on Barn 14.   There are three cars stored there, as Jamie had reported.

Buzz is working on parts for our oldest private car, the Ely.  The name definitely rhymes with "really" and not "rely", he informs me.  That's the way they say it in Nevada.

After a coat of primer, the cover looks much better, but another round of sanding and painting will be called for.

Rod shows us the work he's doing to make new brush holders for the two traction motors that will go into the 24.  A commercial shop quoted a cost of $8,000 for this job, so it's being done in house.  Rod has made a bracket for holding the hammers up while the springs are installed and adjusted.  New springs have been ordered and should arrive shortly.  On the left, you can see the sample spring in place.  New axles, springs, nuts and bolts, and so on will go into this construction.  

Here's what one of the brush holders looks like as removed from a motor.  They all have various problems.

But luckily we have enough good castings to complete the job.  These three, as well as the one above, have been cleaned up for rebuilding.

Although this work is being done in house, it's still expensive, and costs exceeded our budget.   Your contributions to the CRT 24 fund would be greatly appreciated.  As you've seen before, Tim has been doing a fantastic job on the car itself, and now the biggest challenge is to produce a working motor truck.  We could use your help!

Gerry is finishing up the air piping for the brakes on LSE 810.

In the afternoon, Jeron and Dan started switching.  Barns 10 and 11 will need to be switched out as part of this gigantic shuffling of the deck.  Here a string of cabooses is being pulled out of track 112.

Here we're looking down 112.  On the left is the dome car, on the right is the Train of Terror.

And here three of the cabooses are being pushed in on track 141.

And then a tank car goes in on 144.  They continued to switch, but I needed to get back to work.

(If you haven't figured out our numbering system, the four tracks in Barn 6, for instance, are numbered 61 to 64, the four tracks in Barn 14 are 141 to 144, and so on.   We don't actually have 144 yard tracks, though it would be nice.)

After a lot of sanding and scraping around the control position, much of it got a first coat of primer.  Eventually all of this will be painted blue.

Also, I installed the new brass latch on the window in the main compartment, as mentioned last time.  This will need white primer and then finish paint.   It's nice not to have any missing parts.

But even as the first cars are going into Barn 14, we're planning ahead for yard 15 and then Barn 15.  We can use volunteer time and labor in all sorts of ways, as well as financial support, as the Museum continues to expand.