Sunday update

 Frank writes...

Sunday was a quiet day in the car shop. Several of the regular shop crew were out of the shop for much of the day - Joel was working on the coach train while Richard, Greg, and Good Nick were out on the railroad for most of the afternoon using the bucket truck to complete the transfer of bracket arms and signal wiring off from an old, failed line pole to its adjacent replacement.

I spent much of the day kind of puttering around. I spent a while using a marker to trace Futura lettering on the 453. We haven't yet been able to locate the tracings taken off of the 451 back in 2010 when it was stripped, but we definitely want to letter the 451 in its Futura lettering scheme, so we will just have to trace these off of the 453 instead. Fortunately Futura is a pretty common typeface (I believe the Union Pacific uses it) so we should be able to fill in any gaps. But tracing off of the 453 will allow us to get everything exactly right, and going over the barely-visible lines with marker is the first step.

The as-built Futura lettering is pretty evident on the letterboard. The car numbers, not so much; my best guess is that they may have been more diligent about sanding down the lower half of the car, but who knows. This is also just a "first pass" and we should be able to find more of the original lettering with a bit of sanding. That said, though, a lot of the original paint on the 453 really is falling off, so sanding will be a "touchy" proposition.

My biggest priority for the day was to put yellow ropes across alternating seat rows in the 309 and 319. Thanks to Jeff Fryman for providing nylon rope, a threading tool to allow for braided "lassos" to be made, and several completed examples. As shown above, both cars now have these loops that can be easily loosened and tightened to transfer the ropes from row to row between trips. As far as I know, the 309 and 319 are now ready for service. They're scheduled as the "evening shift" train on Sunday, September 6th and I think that thereafter they should be available as an alternative to the CA&E steel train on any given weekend that the weather is good. If you're signed up to run anytime in September, are qualified on the wood cars, and prefer blue to red, let us (and Jim West) know.

As usual, there were multiple projects seeing progress. Norm and Rich were making progress on the 28; I hadn't seen Norm in over a year, as our paths just never seemed to cross, so it was good to say hi to him. Tim and Buzz were looking over newly-made Jewett Car Company vinyl decals for the 1754 that will go on the inside of the car. And above, Zach shows off the interior of the 757's smoker, which as of Friday has all of its seats installed. Other than a bit of bulkhead lettering and some hardware needed for the smoker/main compartment door, the interior of the car is effectively put back together and the smoker restoration is now done. John was working in the "lean-three" upholstery station using this same red material but he was working on bench seats for the Electroliner cafe car. Since it arrived at IRM the cafe car has had vinyl seats, but in the 1940s its seats had the same red cloth material as the "Silverliners."

Lettering wasn't the only progress being made on the 1754 front, though. Bob Olson and Nick, the latter pictured, dug out the truck shown here from the material yard. When IRM acquired the 1754 back in the 1970s, the CTA didn't want to give up the car's motor truck, which since a rebuild in the 1920s had been of the same type used by 4000s. So we purchased the car with an older-style motor truck and that's what it's had since. But to be correct for its post-rebuild condition it needs a 4000 motor truck. So this truck was dug out (from beneath one or two other trucks and at least one small tree) and it will be overhauled and placed underneath the 1754. If you are ever riding along the streetcar line and wonder why we keep all of that rusty stuff out in the material yard, now you know - it comes in awfully handy sometimes. Anyway, after Nick and Bob set this on the rails, Zach and Joel got it moved down to the tail track out of the way. The motors will be pulled and then, when it's light enough to easily move around, the truck will be relocated for overhaul work to begin.

Finally, in other 'L' cars news, Thomas and Ashton were working on interior painting in the Baldy. They got the walls in half of the car painted with the results shown above. This car is really coming along nicely and will be a unique addition to our CTA 4000 fleet when complete.

Public service announcement: we still need a conductor for evening shift operations on the 6th! Don't delay, contact Jim West to sign up today.