Thanks to Richard Schauer for forwarding along the news of significant progress on our CTA trolley bus, 9631, which is off-site at a contractor for exterior restoration and repainting.
The final push is indeed in motion. I was at the shop on three days this week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and progress was evident on each day.
Last week, they had suggested coming on Monday, because they had planned to complete body work and prime the bus on Friday and Saturday. Some work got done, but not as much as expected. In particular, the wood back doors received a first coat, and some removal of damaged rivets was done. The rear bumper was wire-wheeled in place, and the battery compartment door was made new (it was in pretty bad shape).
By Wednesday, the whole bus was in primer. The sheet metal for the rear bumper anti-ride cover was still not done. They asked me to come back on Friday to look at paint match cards to approve the colors.
On Friday, the anti-ride was complete and installed, and the paint matches were done. In the photo, the original colors (Sherwin-Williams Acrylyd, new old stock, bought by CTA in about 1989 and still quite liquid and usable) are on the outside, and the matched colors are on the inside. Both their paint guy and I thought the alpine white was a nearly perfect match. The green was very close, and he had made two slightly different mixes of it in an attempt to get as close as possible. I honestly couldn't tell much difference between the two, and the difference from the "real" color was so slight as to be insignificant. I think it's well within the normal variation of color that CTA used.
The present plan is to paint around the middle of next week.
2 comments:
That will look pretty sharp when its done. I haven't ventured down to bus-land lately, is the paint on the Connecticut coach finished or still a work in progress?
Tim- It's still very much in progress, because it's basically fill-in work. I started the paint project on it because it looked bad and was a simpler paint job than others that also looked bad. One side is now almost complete, the side which faces the center aisle and is more visible. I'll keep picking at it as I have time; I'm in no hurry. It will also get glass before it's done.
R. W. Schauer
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