Rough Roof Rubs Railroaders Wrong

It's been two weeks since I last posted, as I was on vacation to visit my latest grandchild.  He's a cute little fellow, three months old, and the trip was well worth while.

But now it's back to work, and to make up for the delay, I have lots of progress pictures to show.

As you have read, the 453 is now in the roof booth on track 42, and I'm sure the neighbors must think it's depressing property values.  So it's up to me to start at the top and work down.

Before work begins, let's take a quick preview of the situation.  Here's the #2 end, with the horn still in place.  The car had two layers of canvas, but much of the second layer was already gone.

And then the remaining layer on the north side of the car blew off while it was in transit from Scranton to Union.

A view of the running boards and cables, still in place.

On the south side of the car, the canvas was still there, although in bad shape.  Both sides are structurally sound.

But the ends of the car have problems.

Both ends, it appears, have holes where a streetcar managed to poke its pole through the roof.  This seemed to happen a lot at Cleveland.  You may remember that the 460 had the same problem, as documented here.  I patched it up, but on the 453 I'll be able to do a better job since the entire roof is being recanvassed.

More along the south side.

And look, there's Gerry showing his work on the 306 to Al Choutka.

This is, in theory, a before and after sort of picture:

I started by removing what was left of the canvas on the north side, mostly just the folded-over strips at the tack molding.  When removed, they look like miniature versions of the nail strips that police use to catch speeders.

On an historical note, this handy shelf was built by Glenn Guerra about 25 years ago when he was working on the Talisman.  It's still useful.  And I have my own air conditioning.

By lunch time, I had cleaned up about half of the tack molding on the north side.  I could keep going, but I'm starting to have second thoughts about reusing the old molding.  It might be better to replace it, and I'll wait for some second opinions from experts before continuing.

So instead I started removing the running boards.  I detached and removed the two in the middle, and started on the #1 end.

Then I removed most of the canvas on the south side.

And also the canvas at the #1 end.

And continued on the running boards.  And that's it for Day 1.

Meanwhile, here's the nicely painted air tank for the 451.

And I take it this is the compressor which needs to be overhauled for the 36.  Much thanks to the car shop guys for all their work on various projects like this.

Norm Krentel and Rich Castagna were working on the 28.  Here Norm is drilling holes on the front panel assembly.

Here Rich is also drilling some.  He spent much of the day threading rivets, which I still don't quite understand.  But they must know what they're doing.

And outside, two steam locomotives are now nicely staged in front of Barn 9.

But back in Barn 8, you have your choice of destinations:  Peoria, Toledo, or Detroit.  I just hate having to make decisions like this....