Saturday Progress

Saturday was another damp day, and revenue service was running for a limited number of visitors.  I never got around to photographing any of it, however.  But we really need to give credit to all of the operating people who have continued to provide service under very challenging conditions.  You know who you are.

Work continued on the 453.  I spent more time trying to remove the ceiling panel described earlier, again without success.  I was told that the second shift guys might try solving the problem, but I haven't heard of any results yet.  Stay tuned.

So let's look at the roof itself.  The center section is pretty much ready for painting.  At the southwest corner, several of the roof boards had rotted out at the bottom and come loose from the framing.

So for now I have them braced against the scaffolding, and I have a plan for fastening them in place.

Meanwhile, the scenery has changed somewhat.

I finished removing all remaining tacks and bits of canvas from the tack molding all the way around the car, with the exception of two places where the molding will have to be replaced.  One is the southwest corner seen above, and the other is a smaller section of the southeast corner.

But the rest of the tack molding is ready for our patented epoxy treatment, using Tim's specifications.  This is a two-part process: first the wood is painted with a liquid epoxy, pushed into any cracks as much as possible.  This is very slow drying, and remains liquid for a few hours.  After this is applied, a much thicker solid epoxy is troweled on and pushed into the cracks.  It dries faster.

I managed to do about 2/3 of the north side of the car.  The solid epoxy was not yet quite hard when I left, so it still needs to be sanded down.  But this seems to be going well.  And by the way, I intend to update my FAQ on canvas roofs somewhat, relating to the issue of replacing vs repairing tack molding.  There's always something new to learn.

There were, of course, several other busy people working on their projects, but I didn't have much time to capture them on film.   Here Tim is cleaning off an air tank on the 1754:

And he has mostly been working on new signs of various types for the car.

And in the distance, we see Eric wire-wheeling truck parts for the Cleveland PCC:

So that's about it for today.