Blazing progress

Frank writes...

Saturday afternoon was hot - blazing hot, as Bob Olson from the Track Department described it when he stopped by after doing some switch greasing.  The high was in the mid-90s I believe. The original plan was that our sign painter would come out and put the striping and outlines on the 205, but he had a last-minute conflict so that plan got scrapped. But I was already planning on going out so I put the time to good use over in the CA&E department.

I'm afraid the only photo I took wasn't that interesting; the 319 and 308 are shown on the pit track lead.  I brought them over so that I could do some needle-chipping on the 319 using compressed air from the shop, and over three or four hours managed to finish the truss rod and queen posts on the "R" side of the car (not coincidentally, the shady side) as well as the outside of the field tap switch box and some of the brackets under the car.  Most of these had received red or grey overspray so it will be nice to get them cleaned up and painted black.  Joel helped by moving the Boeing "L" cars out of the way and Zach helped me put the train back in Barn 8 at the end of the day.  In the evening I spent a bit of time tidying up the mess of tie-down straps that had been salvaged from the 321's tarp job but that was mostly it.

The property seemed reasonably busy and mid-afternoon a group of bus aficionados stopped out, leading to a variety of trolley and motor buses buzzing around the property. I also met a volunteer from the National Tramway Museum in Crich, England who was a PCC fan - an interest I'd guess is rarer there than it is on this side of the pond. He was especially intrigued by CSL 4001. You never know what might attract people's attention! There was a group of people working on inspecting the Boeing cars, more being done on the Cleveland PCC, and there were exciting rumors of rapid progress being made on the Shay over in the Steam Shop. Stay tuned and don't touch that dial!