Sunday in fall

Frank writes...

Sunday I didn't arrive until mid-afternoon but it was a beautiful day to be out at IRM. Temperatures were in the 60s, maybe 70 or so, and it was sunny out. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be much of a crowd but hopefully there will be more people out next weekend for Steam in the Fall.

When I arrived I spent a while jawing with Ray and Richard over in the bus barn before heading over to the car shop. The first thing I wanted to do was get some of the stuff we acquired last weekend into safe storage. First up: nine bulkhead windows from Rochester Syracuse & Eastern cars shown above. These aren't anything we particularly need, but it turns out that the New York Museum of Transportation in Rush is interested in preserving them, so we will store the windows for them for a while. Many thanks to Greg for helping move these into storage.

Then Greg helped me get that K-63G controller out of the car shop, where it was doing no good, and into Knoxville 419, where it will someday do quite a bit of good. When we got to the 419, lo and behold, we found that there was already a K-63G in the car! It's missing a handle (no big deal) but it turns out we now have both of the controllers the 419 needs. Hey, the car's almost ready to run now.

While we're here, why don't we take a quick look at the interior of the 419. It's actually in very nice shape, as is the body of the car, which has essentially no rust or rot at all to speak of. It wouldn't take a whole lot to make this car into a very presentable display piece. And it's our only streetcar that was segregated in service, so we could potentially use it to tell a pretty important story. But I digress.

The rest of my day I spent work on the 18. I did some sanding on the left (blind) side of the car forward of the drop center section and then cleaned it up and spot-primed it. The next time I'm out, hopefully, this area will get a fresh coat of Bankers Grey. I stopped at the center section because there's some rust breaking through the steel there and I want to try blasting some of it out with a needle-chipper. To do that, I'll need to bring the car over to the pit lead. Stay tuned. I also cut another piece of plywood to size to fill the last remaining hole in the ceiling; I ran out of time before I could prime it, but in time it will get white primer and white paint and then will get installed.

Here's Dan showing off new hinges he has fabricated for one of the motorman's doors on the Electroliner. The original hinges rusted apart, so one (both?) motorman's door has just been temporarily fixed into place but not usable. You'll note that because the side of the train is curved, each of the three hinges is a different length.

In other news, Joel was working on repairing a contact tip in the gang switch on the 4391 that has been making operation of its MG set problematic while Greg and Good Nick did some troubleshooting on one of our two substations, which is apparently experiencing some issues. And at the end of the day the rotary snow plow was moved back and forth through the yard a little to make sure it's movable for next week. It's going to be officially unveiled and will be on display all weekend, so that will be impressive to see.