Inspection Season

Frank writes...

It's inspection season again. Time on the pit is in high demand, and on Sunday the lucky car was the 4391, which Jack, Richard, and Joel were all working on at one time or another.

A huge "thank you" goes to Jack for all of his help with getting the 36, 319, and 309 going and brought over to the pit lead. My priority was to get all of the motor armature bearings and axle caps lubricated, and I managed to do that with Jack's assistance. This is a job that is best done outdoors, for the daylight, and with someone's help, to hand the dipstick and oil can in to the person who has wedged themselves in between the top of the truck frame and the bottom of the car. Of course the rest of the inspection work on these three cars (or at least the 309 and 319, which are scheduled to run on the 30th) still remains to be done.

Another huge "thank you" goes out to Ray Piesciuk. He had some glass light shades from the Julie Johnson collection in storage and met up with me to go through them. We've been missing one of the glass light shades from the 18 (the photo above, taken last year, shows what these look like) since we got the car. Amazingly, there were not one but two of the correct type in the Johnson collection! So the 18 will now have a complete set of these.

And a final huge "thank you" to Richard Schauer for his help with the 18 windows in the wood shop. On Saturday I finally made it over to Sherwin-Williams and had a gallon of the correct "dark cream" paint for the 18 mixed. Unfortunately I ran out of time after painting just one window, so Richard got the other three in the shop painted. These are now ready to install on the car, and as time permits I can start painting more windows (and window posts) cream as well.

As for more general interest news, Sunday was the 1630's first day in revenue service since 2019, so that was nice. It was pulling its relatively new water car, an ex-IC tender. While this doesn't look as cool as the General American Falderol milk car, I'm told it's actually quite accurate because the Frisco evidently used very similar tenders in exactly this capacity. Either way, it's always nice to see the Decapod out on the railroad. Meanwhile Joel was racing about organizing and putting things away, Nick and Greg were fixing some insulators in the trolley bus overhead near the ladder track, and Jeron and Andy were both around as well. Even Doodlebug Bob made an appearance, his first trip to IRM in over a year I believe.