A little bit of everything

Frank writes...

A lot got done on Sunday on a number of different projects. I managed to keep moving.

This isn't going chronologically, but the big news happened in the late afternoon and evening. Greg suggested working on bending the steel that was obtained last weekend by Joel for Shaker 18. Our resident steel-working expert, Richard, manned the torch to heat up the two 2' long pieces of bar stock while Greg and I ran the channel locks. After a bit of work, this was the result.

And then after dinner Greg cut the new pieces to length on the chop saw. This is the final (to date) product, with two new brake bars sitting in front of the two old brake bars. The task for next weekend will be to drill holes and grind in some radii. These will then be ready to install in the 18. A huge THANK YOU to Greg and Richard for all their work on this!

Moving back to mid-afternoon, when I had arrived at the shop I found this happy sight: during the week Richard was able to separate the two pieces of the 18's tail light casting. The inner ring and outer ring shown here had been fused together by a mixture of rust and paint, but with a lot of patience and heat he was able to get them apart. He even drilled out the end of the crack in the inner ring and brazed that up.

In the previous photo you'll note there's a bit of a chunk missing from the outer ring. We were able to salvage that, so Richard brazed it back into place as shown above. Afterwards he sand-blasted the work and then I primed both cast rings. The next step in this little project will be to construct or procure a metal can about 7-3/4" in diameter and 2-5/8" deep to replace the hopelessly rusted original.

And as we continue to regress in time, when I first arrived at the museum there wasn't anybody around. Joel and Richard hadn't arrived yet while Greg and Good Nick were out working on DC Line Department projects (more on that later). So I grabbed some black paint and got to work painting the saddles for the 453. Here's the "before and after" when I was partway through; rest assured that I did finish painting all of the saddles. I also put a second coat of black paint on the "bird house" signal box but it really doesn't look any different than it did before so I didn't snap a picture. But it's definitely ready to hang on display somewhere now. Per Joel's recommendation I also put some aluminum paint on the base ends of the three trolley poles painted last week.

Of course everyone else was hard at work too. As mentioned previously Greg and Nick were out in the bucket truck doing line work. A replacement pole in Yard 6 needed to have the last of its hardware swapped over from the rotted original, so they completed than and then took down the old rotted pole. Meanwhile Joel is working on repair work on our old reliable, the 415. The step gearbox on one side failed, meaning the step just stays in the "down" position and doesn't raise when you close the doors. So he's disassembled the gearbox for repairs as shown here.

Ashton and Thomas were working for much of the day on DC Line Department projects too, in this case cleaning up wood strains. This isn't the most glamorous job but it's absolutely necessary if we want to keep our overhead in good repair. Richard was also out, of course, mostly working on projects for the 18. I also gave him the Scalzo 5x7 collection and took home the Scalzo 8x10's. So watch for some more interesting stuff to come.

And it was the last night of Happy Holiday Railway: The Holiday Light Experience. This was the oddest HHR yet but it worked out pretty well in the end and we got nothing but rave reviews from everyone who attended. At the end of the night, the electric cars got put back into the barns amidst a bit of freshly-fallen snow. The open car is pictured out on the tail track with the surrounding snow lit up by the car lights. Hey, is that guy qualified on this car?