Sunday update

Frank writes...

It was a rainy Sunday at the museum, which quashed any designs I may have had on bringing one or more of the wood cars over to the pit for inspection work. But quite a bit of work got done anyway. The first project was to help Dan reattach the 36's air compressor to its cradle. This was done pretty expeditiously - I think it took me longer to find the correct hardware to bolt the thing back to the cradle than the actual lift and transfer took. But of course I completely forgot to take a photo. Oops.

And then Joel helped me check, and lubricate as needed, the motor armature bearings on the 36, 309, and 319 over in Barn 8. Thanks Joel! Of course there were no photos of this, either, as it was markedly un-photogenic.

But here's something slightly more interesting. I got the seats in the smoker of the 460, which were unbolted last week, labeled and moved into the main compartment of the car. This car has medium blue-grey walls, and that discoloration line you see on the bulkhead is because there is a seat that sits up against that. The smoker has four stationary seats - one on each side against the interior bulkhead, one against the "closet," and a single sideways seat under the railfan window - plus three "middle" seats that can be spun around on their bases to change direction.

Here's why this work is being done - the paint in the smoker has, for whatever reason, failed in a much more noticeable manner than that in the main compartment of the car. This isn't acceptable for a car we want to use in regular service, hence the plan to repaint the smoker interior (and probably touch up a few spots in the main compartment, too, where the paint has been worn off).

While we were waiting for the usual suspects to assemble for dinner, Joel helped me get the two baggage racks down. These things are heavy! That's Joel's shoulder there in the vestibule. Most of the paint on the racks is in pretty good shape, so we'll want to decide whether to just wire brush them and repaint them or go the full sand-blasting route.

After dinner, I started with wire-wheeling, and got this far before running out of steam (and time). The paint came off of the panel above the windows remarkably easy - either this hadn't been primed at all by St. Louis Car Company or they used a very thin layer. No wonder the paint here failed! The posts are tougher, partly because of needing to work around obstacles like screw heads. I need to get a wooden "paddle" or two so that I can wire-wheel around the shades and window frames without worrying about the wire wheel skipping and damaging them. Everything on the walls is metal except for the trim strip along the bottom of the car cards, which is wood; the window sills, which I think are some sort of Bakelite or plastic; and the panels under the windows, which are Masonite or similar. Fortunately the finish on all of these areas is in pretty good shape so I won't need to worry about stripping them.

Joel was working on sorting and cleaning while Nick and Greg were working on replacing diodes in the currently-out-of-service "east end" substation. And it was pointed out to me that the boards shown above are for the New York subway cars, which despite their truly wretched appearance are basically operational. They were test-run last year but their roof boards are too rotted for safe operation, so they're going to be replaced. So here you have it - "roof birds for the Redboards."