It's still really cold

Frank writes...

Our cold snap continues and I believe the high this weekend was around six degrees again. But fortunately the work needing to be done on the 18 is work that can be done inside the shop. Even more fortunately, several people have pitched in to help make this progress possible.

During the week Joel picked up some sheet metal for the "tin can" tail light housings and cut it to the size needed for the housing sides. Richard and I went out into the barn and used the rolling machine, shown here, to make the straight pieces of metal into curly pieces of metal. This is a very simple but fairly useful gizmo that I'd never used before. About 10 minutes out in the freezing barn was enough, but we got two pieces of metal rolled, enough for both tail end light housings.

After that Richard spent a while with a vice and some locking pliers to put a jog in one end of the metal side so that it will overlap. And by the time he was done with that, Greg showed up from an errand he had run to Harbor Freight. He purchased something for the department we hadn't had: a spot welder. This little machine is perfect for welding together pieces of sheet metal. Greg had to put a 240v plug on the thing but then he got it set up and tested, as shown here.

Greg and Richard got our curly piece of metal welded into a circle and then showed me how the thing worked. Then it was off to the races, welding the base of the can we made last week to the side. Thanks to Richard for snapping this photo, and the one at the top, of me working on this. It's tough to see but that flyer clipped to the white board right behind my head is a fundraising flyer from back around 2004 proclaiming "You can run this train!" and advertising Take the Throttle trips on the 308-309. At the time this was one of the things we were doing to help pay off the motor rebuilding costs for the 309. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

We made a lot of progress and the first tail light housing is almost ready for primer and paint. As is usually the case, we'll be experts at this right about the time we finish and move on to some other part of the 18. Above, clockwise from top left we have the can of Bankers Grey, the new housing, a transfer punch set, the old housing, and the inner casting that holds the red glass.

That cast ring shown in the previous photo is attached by two machine screws that thread into the outer casting, but one of the threaded holes broke off at some point in the distant past. So Richard is shown working on a replacement piece of steel that will be bolted on to that casting to allow us to bolt everything together properly. And hey, when we're done with this, it will be time to do the second one!

I can't thank Richard and Greg enough for all of their work on this project. Joel's help was also invaluable in sourcing and cutting the steel we needed. While all of this was going on, Good Nick was hard at work cleaning up metal flashing for the 415 and Joel spent most of the afternoon fighting with the department pickup truck to recharge its battery, inflate its tires, and dig it out of the snow so that it can be used if and when we need it.