Repainting Here and There

We've been running the 319 in revenue service for a few years now, and everything has been fine except that when the car is outside in direct sunlight, it's obvious that the walls were not completely painted, and coverage is spotty, to say the least.  Most people won't focus on this, I hope, but when serving as conductor I find myself wondering who did such a shoddy job.  Well, look in the mirror.

 All I can say in my own defense is that inside the barn with just the car lights and a drop light or two for illumination, it looked much better.  So when we have a nice day with plenty of natural light, the thing to do is pull the car out and apply another coat or two of paint.  A couple of months ago I redid one side of the smoker.  Yesterday I finished the smoker and started on the main compartment.

After painting, it looks like this.  The paint is still wet, which probably magnifies the difference.

 And at a different angle, with flash.  It looks like a different color, doesn't it?  Here you can even see, at the bottom, the reflection of the sun shining on a seat back.  The weather was perfect for this, although it was rather windy, constantly rattling the windows and doors, and occasionally even rocking the boat a little.  That's not a problem unless you're trying to edge something like this:

So I hope to finish this job before winter sets in.  Luckily the ceiling looks fine, and most of the walls below the window sill are better, or at least the imperfections are less noticeable.

I didn't spend much time seeing what other people were doing.   Henry Vincent proudly shows off a conductor's chair he refinished at home.  He points out that there are no glue joints in this chair; it's entirely held together by little steel rods.

Riveting continues on the Michigan Electric car.

And outside, the B&G guys are hard at work.  Here Andy Choutka is working on 50th Avenue, which is a constant maintenance problem.  As Bob Olson was pointing out, Jim Blower used to repaint the station every year or two until he died, then we had Carl Illwitzer doing it, and now it's Andy's turn.  Bob says it's too bad we can't get vinyl siding in the correct color, ha ha. 

But probably the biggest news was pouring concrete for the southward extension of the parking lot.  At lunch time, work was finishing up on forms for the curbs of these little islands that will be surrounded with pavement.

And a few hours later, the concrete was in place and being finished up by the contractors.