Tuesday Report

It's time for another thrilling episode of the Hicks Car Works blog, so hold onto your seats and don't touch that dial. 

I hadn't seen Norm Krentel for a couple of weeks, but today I saw him as he was working on painting new sheet metal parts for the 28.  He mentioned that he's been digitizing thousands of slides from the good old days, so I'm hoping we'll be able to present some of them to you soon.

John Sheldon was hard at work on the 306, as always.  The arched window frames for the north side of the car are ready for fitting, as seen here:

And by the end of the day, all five were in place.

The lumber for the running boards on the 453 arrived today, and John helped unload them.  Next time, I'll start cutting them to length, making the lap joints, and perhaps even priming them.  Until they're done, they'll just be in everybody else's way, like so many other things in the shop.   So sue me.

I spent most of the day tacking down the canvas at the east end of the car.   This looks exactly like what we've seen before.  I hadn't quite finished when I ran out of tacks, but I was out of energy too.  Anyway, this should get finished next time.  I also did some more ironing.

One grab iron has been temporarily re-installed, since that's the only safe way to get onto the roof.  The canvas shouldn't be moving any more, so punching a couple of small holes in the correct location won't hurt anything.

Speaking of that grab iron, I noticed from pictures that these cars had a second layer of canvas installed on the path a trainman has to take to get onto the running boards.  So I cut out a couple of pieces, about 16" x 4', and they will be installed later.  I want to paint the entire main layer of canvas first, of course.  There's plenty of spare canvas available, and it has several uses.

And then I spent some time collecting all the canvas clamps and ratchets and storing them away for the next roof project.  Besides finishing up a small amount of tacking still to be done, the next step will be to start painting the canvas.  Our Chemistry Department has developed a new secret formula for canvas paint, in conjunction with Sherwin Williams, and it should be ready for use soon.  

So that's it for today.  And again, our sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to the

308 motor project!