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Today was another busy Saturday at IRM, and as usual I can only report on a few of the things that were going on.  Sorry!  At a minimum, I know that people from the Steam Dept., Freight Car Dept., and Track were busy, and probably others, so what you have here is a biased sample of all the activity.  Be that as it may...

We'll start with B&G.  It was cold and windy today, as you may note from the flag, and this is the same Marengo Depot that has been there since 1964.  But for the first time since it arrived on the property, the depot has working heat.  This will be important since we want to have it available for Happy Holidays Railway and other activities during the winter months.

While it was cold and windy outside, inside Barn 4 it was quite pleasant.  I've started on finishing the roof work on the 451, and the rolling fork lift makes this much easier.  The next step will be to install the saddles, and I found it was easy enough to locate the correct locations on the roof.  

The saddles that I made a couple of years ago were brought up and spread out on the roof.  I also spent some time working up a system using a long string to mark the exact center of the roof.  It turns out that the seam in the canvas is remarkably accurate as a center line.  Now I just need to obtain the correct screws and some caulk to start attaching the saddles. 

Inspection is a never-ending process these days, and because this is track 41, it will often be necessary to have trolley power in the barn, when we will want to work on the roof of the 451.  So I spent some time attaching these professional cable guards over the trolley wire, which the late Max Tyms acquired for us.  They're very stiff, but with enough effort they provide absolute protection.  Safety First, as they say.

Over on the next track, Tim is installing the floor ribs in the 1754.

And Bill was doing finish painting on the underbody equipment.

Another long-term Car Dept. project has been replacing the canvas roof on our first car, IR 65.  Jon Fenlaciki has been working on this, and today the canvas was lifted onto the car's roof.  Seen here are Tim and Jon pulling the folded canvas onto the roof.

 

By the end of the day, it was being stretched:

In other news, the trucks for the Ingersoll-Rand boxcab have been assembled, and are temporarily stored next door in Barn 3.

And the Car Dept. guys spent much of the afternoon assembling the North Shore trucks back behind Barn 4:

And of course there were several other active projects being worked on.  You just have to be there in person to get the full picture.