Sunday Redux

Frank writes...

As earlier stated (and supported by photographic evidence), I was out on Sunday afternoon and spent much of my time working on tracing the lettering on IT 415.

This involved transferring the distinctive IT serif lettering onto Mylar sheets for potential future use.

We actually don't know precisely where the original tracings for this lettering are; one of the potential locations is, as mentioned, currently the site of a bee colony. Figures.

My original plan had been to bring the 18 over to the pit to do some needle-chipping. Fortunately for me - and for the 18 - the car shop guys were kind enough to repay my time working on the 415 with their own time working on the Shaker Heights car! Many, many thanks to Greg, Nick, and the two new guys, Mike and Nathan, all of whom contributed to bringing the 18 over and taking care of a bunch of needle-chipping around the car. Thank you!

This car has very little steel above the belt rail, but there's a section surrounding the center doors that's steel, and the corner posts are also steel. This before-and-after shows how badly alligatored the paint around the center doors had gotten over the years. Fortunately the paint below the belt rail is in far better condition.

This spot on the rear of the car, on the angled dasher panel right over the bumper, shows a place where rust jacking had started to push out the steel. With the rust now chipped out, this can be shored up and patched.

After I finished up on the 415, I tackled some of the remaining needle-chipping around the 18's doors that needed to be done. Nick grabbed this photo of me at work.

And here's the result: the steel around the center doors is now relatively cleaned off and ready for wire-wheeling, priming, and painting. The trim around the windows just needs some touch sanding, while the doors themselves will need a good rebuilding at some point.

At the end of the day we had a little show-and-tell. The Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista, California was kind enough to send us some roll signs from our area. There was one each from Gary Railways, the CTA, and the CA&E. And then there were four from the West Towns, all of them different than the others.

This first one certainly looks like it would look right at home on the 141.

Lake and Madison destinations on this one.

This one seemed older than the others and lists, from the top, Riverside; Brookfield; La Grange; Kenton-Cermak Rd.; Brookfield Zoo; 46th Ave & 22nd St; Harlem Ave; Berwyn-Lyons; 52d Ave; Roosevelt Rd; Madison St; Chicago Ave; Special; and Carbarn. 

And then there's this one, which was marked Chicago but isn't. Maybe Rochester, New York? Anyone know for certain?