Wednesday Report

Skipping the usual complaints about the weather, it was another busy and productive day out at the old Museum.  I needed to do some switching in preparation for two-car operation this Saturday, and I also topped off the compressors on the 308 and 319.  So if any qualified motormen want to sign up, remember you won't have to check the oil, it's already been done!

Most of the Wednesday regulars were hard at work.  I only took pictures of a few of them.  For instance, the freight car guys and several coach workers were at work over in barns 10 and 11, but that was too far to travel.

Here John Faulhaber and Henry Vincent are working on getting the latch to work on one of the sliding doors for MD car 213.  It's not easy.

Pete Galayda continues to rebuild and repaint doors for the Class B, and other projects.

A two-car train of 4000's was in use for regular service, presumably due to a charter.  Thomas Slater was the motorman.  It's good to have the 4410 back in service.

Ed and John continue their work inside the Electroliner.

And so on.  One project that may be seeing some renewed activity is cleaning out the 306, our Fox River car, so it can get a cosmetic restoration to some extent and then be switched out of Barn 4.  Gerry, Lorne, and I spent a couple of hours moving parts out of the car and onto the new shelves in the Lean-3.  At least half of this job was in air-conditioned comfort, so that's good.

New upper sash frames were made many years ago.

And some other odd parts were discovered during this process.  That writing looks vaguely familiar.

And as an added bonus on Saturday, there will be a book launch for a new book about the Trans-Siberian Railway by a noted raconteur and photojournalist, Jeanne Roppolo.  (We have plenty of raconteurs already, but there's always room for more!)  Why IRM, you ask?  Because we have probably the only two operating locomotives in the country that were built for export to Russia.  One of them, of course, is our Frisco Decapod, and so I took a couple of minutes to get a picture of its Russian-language builder's plate.  It's a direct translation of the standard Baldwin plate above it.  

(i.e. Locomotive Works of Baldwin,  Philadelphia, USA   February 1918.)

The word for "locomotive" (as an adjective) is a typical Russian tongue-twister:  Parovozostroitelniy!   (Accented on the 5th syllable.)  The abbreviation for USA has me puzzled; it's always just  США nowadays.  But there it is, a relic of the Russian revolution a hundred years ago.