It's really cold

Frank writes...

I was out at IRM on Sunday but pretty much confined myself to the heated car shop, as did most of the other volunteers for most of the time. The high for the day was around seven degrees (for our many European readers, that's about -14 C) so working out in the barns was, er, unpleasant.

My first task was to retrieve the Shaker 18 window my father rebuilt last month from the 453, bring it into the shop, and put a coat of hardware store "almond" paint on it. Once we get a gallon of the correct color mixed, it will get a second coat of the correct color, but this works well to make the window presentable so that it can be installed in the car. Why are we waiting to get the correct color of cream mixed? Money! A gallon of paint costs about $50 and we don't have that much in Shaker 18's fund. Please help! No donation is too small to make a difference.

Richard Schauer arrived and proceeded to help in constructing a couple of "tin cans" that will make up the housings for the 18's rear end market lights (to refresh your memory, the housings that need replacing are pictured here). Joel had sourced some 18-gauge sheet metal for this project and with Richard's help we marked out the two circles that will make up the bases of the "cans" and cut them out on the band saw. They were notched around the edges and bent up to form a flange, as shown. We will need some additional steel to make the sides of the "cans" but that won't take long to procure.

And Richard also helped out with reassembling the castings that make up the outside of the first marker light. The two parts of the casting, which nest together, were painted last week and this week we procured some hardware to affix the red glass circle (not a lens, just flat glass) into the inner ring. The outer casting has a break, not visible from the outside, that prevents one of the screws through the inner ring from threading in. So Richard made up a small insert that will make it possible to hold the inner cast ring in place as designed.

As usual, there were other people out and hard at work. Tim was working on more doors for 50th Avenue. Joel was working on various projects, mostly relating to tidying up the shop and putting spare parts into storage (see below). Greg and Nick were largely working on the 415, which - if everything goes to plan - will be repainted this year. Above, Nick is shown straightening out the flashing for one of the car's roll sign boxes. On Saturday evening, Nick, Greg, and Zach spent quite a while photographing roll signs from the 415, our North Shore cars, and Shaker 18 with the goal of getting replica signs made.

Greg also spent some time measuring up the replacement air tank for CA&E 451 that we are going to order. Zach was mostly working on side doors for the 757. At least one of the car's side doors is deteriorated enough that it will need a new one made. The door shown above, though, will not need to be replaced but only needs a bit of repair. It's not an original door, it's a replacement made during the car's time in East Troy, but it's perfectly serviceable.

Nick isn't usually one to toot his own horn, but when the horn is this shiny, well... Here he helps Joel in moving some recently-acquired items into storage. The horns mounted to this board came with a note that they were used on a 1961 fan trip with our own CNS&M 229 and at one point were owned by IRM founder Howard Odinius. So that's interesting.