News from Siberia

Winter arrived early this year, and yikes, was it cold yesterday!  Just like the weather ten years ago when the Trolleyville collection started to arrive.  But this time the Museum's latest acquisition is a CLRV from Toronto, as seen here.  

This was the last modern streetcar order to be equipped with trolley poles; everything later has had pans of some sort.  Pans will never work on our streetcar line, due to the trolleybus overhead, so this will be our most modern operating streetcar for the foreseeable future.  A spare set of trucks will be regauged to standard, and then the car can be removed from its Toronto-gauge panel track.

Most of the other activity took place in our heated shop facilities.  But some things can't be moved inside.  Jon Fenlaciki continued tacking down the canvas on the 65, taking warming breaks as needed. 

The battery-powered lift had to be moved into the shop, because the batteries and hydraulics don't work well in the cold.  And without it, roof work on the 451 would be very difficult.  So mostly I'll be working on the interior and the electrical systems.  The paint is flaking in many places, and I started on trying to strip what's left, without a lot of success so far.  But work will continue.

Tim has been making new seat frames for the 1754, since many of them had disappeared.

Lorne takes a break from his usual work on the Cleveland car to fix a seat for the 306.

The PCC truck is mostly together, and it can even be pushed along by hand.

Speaking of which, Buzz continues to put the velocipede together.   It looks great!

And as usual, there were other projects going on that I didn't get a chance to photograph.