Sunny Sunday

Frank writes...

Sunday was another beautiful spring day, sunny and with highs in the 50s. Time to head over to Barn 7!

I brought over and installed the two windows forward of the doors, shown here, which I painted last weekend. The other two missing windows are currently in the shop, plus I removed the furthest forward window on this side (the last one on this side needing repainting, other than the conductor's window between the doors). One of my goals at the moment is to get all of the windows on this side of the 18 repainted by the time we open in a few weeks.

I hadn't really focused on this before, but that first window on the right side of the car appears to be the only one in the entire car with this little latch system so that you can keep the window open just a few inches. The rest of the windows in the car are either closed or "all the way" (actually about halfway) open. I suppose this was a ventilation technique for cooler days.

I sanded down the Bondo that was applied last weekend, and started sanding more of the panels on the left side of the car (including sanding out the last instance of the Trolleyville-applied 1218 number!), but with the rapid warming over the preceding 12 hours or so, the entire surface of the car was a bit slimy with condensation. So my sandpaper was clogging rapidly and I elected not to apply any primer this go-around. But I did wire-wheel the steel areas around the doors that got needle-chipped last October.

Thrilling, I know. And in other news, we made some progress on planning out how we might get new brake shoes made for the 18, which is currently the critical path toward making it usable for at least occasional public operation. At the end of the day, I put the glass back into the window that received wood putty last weekend and primed it and another window, along with applying wood putty to the window with the unique latch that was removed from the car.

In other news, Nick and a couple of the other guys were out on the line car reinstalling the wire frog at the west end of Schmidt Siding, while Joel was working in the pit on inspecting the 409 (shown below). They finished inspection work on the 714 and 749 earlier this week, and late in the afternoon after the 409 was cleared for service, it was put back in the barn and the 431 was brought over. These four cars will comprise the Bunny Trolley Hop fleet, or at least the majority of it. Doodlebug Bob was also in the shop working on identifying and sorting spare parts from the machine shop portion of the shop.

I also spent a few minutes helping Tom Schneider replace a stack cap on GN&A 26 that had blown off in a wind storm, and I went over to the bus garage to see Richard and exchange the Murphysboro file from the Scalzo Collection for the next one. You'll just have to wait and see what it is! Richard has been working on repainting the Connecticut Company bus we acquired from the Museum of Transport in 2015, as shown below. The roof on this side of the bus is now in a fresh coat of silver, while the window posts (which will be light grey) and the area below the belt rail (which will be dark blue) are getting closer to being ready for paint.

You know what you need? That's right - a visit with the Easter Bunny! I have it on good authority that the Bunny Trolley Hop is nearly sold out, so tell your friends and relatives to get their tickets while they can. And don't worry about inflation and "market adjustments" - for a limited time only, Hicks Car Works readers can get their tickets for full retail price and not a penny over. Such a deal! Don't delay, act now.