Full House

In spite of the icy weather, we had a full house today in the shop, so there are lots of interesting projects for you to see.

Pete Galayda repaints a door for the Illinois Terminal Class B.  All of the windows have been done, so now there are eight doors.

Henry Vincent installed piping to bring compressed air to the west end of the Lean-3.

John Faulhaber is polishing up brass window latches for the 68.

This collection of woodworking tools from the late Al Reinschmidt was donated by his heirs.   They will be auctioned off at the next Arnfest.

Gerry shows off the rearrangement of the machine tools in the original shop, which should provide better use of our space.  Thanks to the Car Dept. regulars for doing all this.  On the other hand, the unfamiliar arrangement requires extra care when walking through the shop.

And while moving things around, they found this motor which goes to the D-13; although it's not very big, it provides the power to shift the cradle for dumping.  So Gerry was very glad to find it.

Dave Rogan and Victor spent all day producing siding for the Pennsy bobber.

This is just part of the stack of finished boards.

Jack Biesterfeld continues to refinish windows for the Green Bay car.

And a relatively new member, Kurt Walmark, was refinishing windows for the Mt. Harvard.  Roger Kramer and Jeff Button were also at work, but I somehow missed them.

And I spent the morning repainting the exterior of the 36's train door.   Red does not cover very well, so two more coats will probably be needed.  But it also has a silver headlight bracket, and the sides are blue.  This wins the prize for esthetics, I think.

Pete was also working on the MD car door, and filled in all the checks and cracks with putty.

John painted more underbody parts for the 451.

And here are some of his polished latches on windows for the 68.

John Fenlaciki continues work on roof parts for the 65.

And Rich Witt helps with planning replacement parts for the roof.

Among other things, Buzz made a new saddle for the 65, with the aid of a new member, Andy.   Sorry, I didn't get his last name.   Next time.

My timing was off, but that's Lorne continuing work on the interior of the Cleveland PCC.  Note that the wiring ducts have been installed in the floor by Eric and Ed.

And I started on another project: refinishing arm rests for the 309.  Several seat frames had to be replaced due to broken castings, and at least one still needs to be done.  Luckily, we have quite a few spares from car 300 that we bought from MCRM a few years ago.

But there's a catch.  These Hale & Kilbourn #197 seats come in at least two varieties.  If you look at the arm rest above, the end casting has a curved top.  All of the seats from the 300 are of this type.   But the same model could also have a rectangular end casting with a flat top.  The 309 had seat frames of both types, but mostly flat.  As a result, the original arm rests don't fit properly to the new frames taken from the 300.   

So I started on stripping some of the replacement arm rests.  Much better than trying to do this at home with its limited space and inadequate ventilation.  By the end of service, the tops had been painted black, but this needs to be stripped for the earlier interior paint scheme in the 309.

When these are stained and varnished, they'll look just as good as the others.

It's always good to see new faces in the crowd, and while the shop was very busy today, it was not yet full to capacity.   In case you were wondering.