Behind the Masks

Who's hiding behind that mask?  That's the question I often find myself asking nowadays.  But maybe you're better at recognizing suspicious people than I am -- let's find out. 

First of all, we have the motorman on the 415:

and his conductor.  I see by his jacket that he's with IRM -- that narrows it down.

We were running revenue service again, and had a pretty good crowd of visitors considering the circumstances.  The CA&E steel cars were supposed to be running, but I was told that the 409 still has an annoying air leak, so two 4000's were brought out instead.  We have several two-car trains available for service on short notice.  Some, such as the North Shore cars, have seats that can't be readily sanitized.  And I would have let them run the 309 and 319, if anybody had realized that I was there.  Is there any place else where that's possible?

But here's the crew.  Some of them look vaguely familiar.

Meanwhile, in the car shop, we have somebody painting parts for a caboose.   Or so he says....

Another suspicious character is busy wire-wheeling parts of a truck...

...while his accomplice is doing the same to a huge spring.  It looks to me like something that Wile E. Coyote would order from Acme, but maybe it's legit.

Two more mysterious figures are plotting over some diagrams.  They look pretty nefarious to me.

And somebody else is hunched over the sand blaster...

Well, enough of that.  I'll be filing a report with the FBI.  Meanwhile, there's nothing mysterious about what I was doing.  I sanded down the filler on the patch at the west end of the 453 and applied some more.  It essentially takes a day to set up completely.

And I applied more paint and epoxy to the tack molding on the car.

Then I started on woodwork for the Trolleyville hole at the east end.  Each piece needs to be cut to shape individually, so I get lots of healthy exercise going up and down stairs.  There are still a couple of pieces to install, but the woodwork is mostly done.  I sure got tired of looking at that hole.

It too will require some filler, but I think it will be just fine once we disguise it with canvas.

Finally, Joel dropped off a pile of parts behind the shop that he says will make a good wintertime project for me.  Just so I won't get bored.  It's great to have friends, even if they're wearing masks.