You Are Not Alone

At least not most of the time, if you're working at IRM.  There's almost always somebody else working on some other project.  And generally speaking, it's nice to have company.

Among other things, we can take pictures of each other.  Here I am removing tacks from the rest of the tack molding on the north side.  South side starts soon.

Photo by Jon Fenlaciki

It's time-consuming but has to be done.  I have hopefully decided to patch up the moldings with epoxy, and we'll see how well that works.  The tacks are hard to get out of the wood, so that indicates the wood is still in good shape overall.

Then I went to work on the saddles.  I found it was easier to split the old saddles apart, rather than try to remove the rusty wood screws from them.  Once the saddles have been split, the screws can easily be removed with pliers.

I removed five of the sixteen total before it got too hot.  So that's good progress.

Meanwhile, John Sheldon continued work on the floor in the 306...

... and he was also sanding down the Bondo on the parts the Gerry had welded.  None of the local body shops can deal with a car this size, so we have to be self-reliant.

Photo by Jon Fenlaciki

And Jon was working on the roof of the 65, of course.  Here he is drilling holes in the support block for the trolley base.

The roof is really looking good.

As Frank mentioned, we would like to be able to operate the 309 and 319 a couple of times this fall, so I went over and checked out the air systems thoroughly, since safety is essential.

The feed valve settings, for instance, are measured with our calibrated gauge, seen here.  I think this picture is not quite straight; when I looked at it myself, it appeared to be right on the mark for the correct value of 70 psi.

Although I see that the clock at the #2 end also seems to read 69 psi.  Close enough, I think.

And similarly on the 319.  I also checked the settings on the governors, tested the pop valves, the whistles, measured the standing travel, and tried the conductor's valves.  All is well.

Later I cleaned up all the old canvas and other debris, and did some work on the #1 end of the roof.

Buzz was also there and has built this nice new table for our new cutoff saw. 

Finally, we can never have too many safety messages:

Actually, I think today's danger is running through switches set against you, but that's just an opinion.