Sunday, August 16, 2020

Saturday Report

My favorite Greek philosopher (apart from Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, Heraclitus, and several others) lambasted me yesterday for going off on vacation and neglecting all the current news.  So I'll have to try to make up for it with more pictures.

I continued working on the roof of the 453, and was able to remove two more of the running boards, plus the removable sections of the roof cables.  And I was also helped by Greg Kepka:


and Zach Ehlers:


who volunteered to remove all of the drip rails, the rope guards, and the ventilators.  You will notice that we enforce social distancing by having them work on opposite ends of the car.  Their help was much appreciated.  In the middle of the roof we're now down to the saddles.


At the west end, it looked like this after removing the drip rails and rope guard.


Pulling off the canvas, we found this unexpected sheet metal plate:


This was probably installed at Wheaton.  Tim Peters came along to look at the tack molding.  Replacing it would be a daunting task, and we think that it can probably be reused.


Pulling off more canvas:


And this is what was hidden by the patch plate:


That can be fixed, although it will take some time.  I spent much of the afternoon removing the tacks from most of the rest of the tack molding on the north side.


Meanwhile, of course, several other Car Dept. projects were in progress.  Here Ed Woytula is working on the PCC truck as Eric looks on:


John Sheldon is progressing steadily on the interior of the 306:



Public operation continued, and we seemed to have a relatively large crowd for 2020.  Old reliable 415 was in operation on the car line.  This is new member Joey Ferrito.


The Shay was pulling the coach train.  It's great to have steam in revenue operation again.







Larry Stone and Paul Cronin ran the 409 and 431.


Back in Barn 4, Keith Letsche was helping on the 1754:



Frank and Vivian even stopped by for a quick visit and a ride:


Finally, Zach has completed installing the seat frames in the restored smoking compartment of the 757.  It's going to look great.




And that was yesterday.   Who knows what today will bring?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy, why didn't they just leave the patch in place on the roof? It was after all prototypical.
C Kronenwetter

Randall Hicks said...

Actually, *they* left it in place, and *I* took it off because I wanted to fix whatever was under it. Both ends need structural rebuilding because the bent pieces are trying to unbend after all these years, among other things.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like me trying to get up out of a chair :) Cute grandchild. Future motorman? Who pays attention to Heraclitus in a trolley car environment anyway? :)
C Kronenwetter