Another one in the bag

Frank writes...

Sunday was the last day of the 2018 Thomas event. I didn't arrive at IRM until about 3pm, too late to be of much help, but there were still people coming in the gate.

Richard, Greg, and of course Johnnie and his crew of ticket sellers had the entrance well in hand as usual. The weather reports had been dire, as they had been for all four days of this year's event, but it never did anything more than spit a little in Union - the predicted showers never really materialized. The crowd seemed pretty good despite the poor weather reports.

You're probably getting tired of seeing photos of the Thomas train, but too bad.

The streetcars in service were the usual: the 415, 3142, 144, and 4391. The Thomas train had the 7700, one Lack coach, and five Rock Island coaches, while the mainline Percy train was a rather attractive all-railroad-roof consist with the B&LE and Santa Fe combines bracketing two Lack cars and the DM&IR day coach.

I spent a little while working on cleaning old caulk and paint out of the end window frame on Shaker 18; a new piece of glass has been procured and I hope to install it soon, which will be a big improvement. The end windows on that car are big, about 34" square! Then, as operations were winding down, I moved the 36 over to Barn 7 just to get it out of the way for Monday. The 308 and 319 are supposed to be in the station around 9am so I figured I'd save my father a bit of switching. Barn 7 was home to the 309 and 321 for six or seven years, from the early 1990s until 2000, but I'm not sure the 36 has ever been in Barn 7 at all. I'm also not sure whether any of the wood cars has been on track 71, which for many years was home to the Electroliner. So here you go. Exciting, isn't it?

As I was closing the doors on 71, Bob Opal was bringing the 415 into the yard to officially close out operations on the Thomas event for this year.

And we are all set for the 308-319 to run tomorrow. Note to self, we still need to reinstall an "off 1" sign, marking where to shut off for the breaker, to replace the one that fell down. In other news, Jeff was working on more wooden platform bracing for the Michigan car while Thomas was "on call" in case of streetcars problems (there weren't any) and was working on catcher repairs on the 4410.