Motion of All Sorts

Today was another nice Saturday, and we seemed to have a good crowd of visitors.  Let's start with operations.  The Buck Brothers were running the 4000's:

And the steam train was running, always a crowd pleaser.  I generally like to take pictures of other people taking pictures of trains:

And then, even better, while the steam engine was pulling in on Station 2, a Diesel comes west pulling our newest electric locomotive.  Only at IRM!

There's a piece of plywood in place to keep people out of the now-empty transformer compartment, which at one time was painted Conrail Blue.  I think.

And as usual, the B&G department are hard at work.  Here we see Dave and Jerry building a rear porch for the Schroder Store, which will soon be our gift shop:

I spent some time cleaning and straightening, and then, because it was too hot to do anything more strenuous, I worked on installing some air hoses for the sleet scrapers on the 319 and 36.  They don't have to be functional, or even hold air, but it would look better to have some connection to the cylinders.  I hope you agree.

I even did some testing, just for fun, but most of the cylinders seem to have bad seals.  Too bad.

While looking under the 36 at the sleet scraper piping, I noticed there's an unusual device.  It's a small metal cylinder with a couple of wires sticking out, no longer connected.  I have no idea what it is.  Another mysterious relic from 1902, I guess.  This is the only one on the car, by the way.

And while we're on the subject of the world's most trivial trivia, the older cars are arranged so that you can only operate all four sleet scrapers at once.  But the 319 has two cutout cocks, so that you can operate either the two in front, or in back, or both.  If I remember correctly, the 431 is the same way.  I really don't know why this would be important.

Among other things, Fred Zimmerman and Jeff Obarek are working on the 451; here they have prepped and primed one of the remaining stairwells.

And are scraping the other one.

And then I helped them for a while on trying to fix the governor for the 1797.  We were unable to fix a couple of leaks, so Jeff went off to look up the Wabco instructions for this device, and we'll get to it next time. 

And Tim continues to make good progress on the 1754, as usual.  Late in the day, the sun makes it hard to see, but the wood parts of the end buffer are now in place and primed.

 Know anybody who likes classic automobiles?  I bet you do!  Remember that next Sunday, August 6, is our annual Transport Extravaganza, with classic autos, trucks, trains, and people!  Don't miss it!