Winter News

Tuesdays are typically a little slow, especially during the winter.   Most of the activity takes place inside.

I started by cutting out the arched pieces for two clerestory windows in the 150, as described before.  Our big bandsaw and sander work much better than anything I have in my basement.

And then the mechanism needed to be cleaned up.

I will finish cleaning it at home, then buff it to a nice finish.  The hinges hadn't hinged for at least fifty years, so they needed some heat.   They get painted, so I didn't worry about the finish.

Meanwhile, Frank Kehoe was helping Tim as usual.   Here he is finishing up the painting job on the slats for the outer platforms on the 24.   They're almost ready to install.

Tim is making new doors for the 1754.   It's a very complicated assembly.   He pointed out, for instance, that the main stiles on the door have two different profiles, above and below the center rail.

And the tongues of the capture panels are stepped, for some reason, as seen here:

And then Gerry was working on the side bearings for the 810.   He's making good progress.

It looks something like this.   There are no rollers, as are usual on passenger cars, but it should work fine.

The rest of my day was spent stripping and sanding inside the 319.   Not a lot to take a picture of.  Much of the original red paint is badly alligatored.

But that gets old in a hurry, so I attacked the door closer at this end, which never worked properly.   It always quickly slammed the door shut, which isn't good.   I tried again to adjust it without success, and finally went out to get a replacement from the 321.   It works much better, though not quite perfectly.   

All of the lettering in the vestibules on this car was painted around when a second coat was put on at some point.   I'm pretty sure this was done at Wheaton, not Cleveland.

During these cold winter months, do any of you need long-term parking for cars you won't be using?  We know how difficult that can be, especially if your cars have steel wheels and are bigger than the average parking space.  Talk to Friendly Nick!  He's got special deals on valet parking you won't want to pass up.  Just drop your keys through the slot in the door.

Anyway, I was glad to see we're collecting rental cars again this winter.  These make serious money for the Museum, as we've mentioned before.  I suppose we won't be able to start filling up the main line until after the Happy Holiday trains are done, but we have more yard tracks available than we did last year.