Busy Tuesday

Tuesday was another busy day at the Museum.  I should mention that work is continuing on replacing about a mile of track on the main line east of Seemann, but I never drive that way, and it's mostly over the hill and invisible from the road.  The contractors and our own track members are always at it.  But I can only report on things happening on the campus, and not even all of those.

By 7:30 when I arrived, Dave was already well into the project of removing the metal line pole at the southwest corner of Barn 4, single-handed.  Does this guy ever go home?

After that, it was obviously time for us slackers to get to work.  I started working on the roof of the 460, of course.  Three of the 1808 group were there.  However, it appears that when Tim isn't watching, some guys are just lying down on the job.

This is actually Mike using a heat gun to strip parts of the truck, and it's best done by lying on a nice comfortable mat.

Meanwhile, Frank K. is needle-chipping the wooden floor of the car.  I would never have thought of needle-chipping wood, but with the right tools and talent it works quite well.

And Tim continued making all the new window frames that will be needed.

On the 306, John is carefully checking and adjusting each of the wooden parts that attach to the body posts.

Jim was cleaning up and polishing brass window latches.  Notice how many there are to do.

In the morning, I started by installing the drip rails at the west end of the 460.  The corresponding parts on the wood cars have four screws each, but these require 28.  So it takes a while.

And here you can barely see the drip rail over the train door.

And then the rope guard was cleaned up and attached.

While we're up here, notice that Jim is now painting the drip rails on the 306.

And if you look real close, it appears that structural repairs have also been made to the roof of the 1808.

After lunch, it had warmed up enough for canvas painting, so I finished painting all of the canvas at the east end.

And then, since that job is finished apart from some possible touch-ups, I started removing the plastic covers along the side of the car.  It looks pretty nice, if I may say so myself.

Back outside, the line pole has been excavated as shown here.

And let's check out the status in back of Barn 4.   These rails into space remind me of a toy train layout under construction.

And here is the new and greatly improved Track 42 under construction.  Our Track Dept. are doing a great job on their end of this project.

And another view of the site of Yard 4 East.  Big changes are coming.