Chilly Sunday

Frank writes...

Winter has arrived, or so it seems - while the temperatures were in the 70s as recently as Thursday, on Sunday the high was around 35 degrees. I arrived mid-afternoon and discovered that the "must do" work was already either done or in progress, so that freed me up to work on the 18.

One of the things I'd like to get done in the spring is painting the 18's roof. We have canvas paint, but there are also the fittings on the roof that will need to get painted with "normal" paint. Here we're near the center of the car, just aft of the doors, looking at the car's trolley base and rather short roof boards. A pad sander with 80-grit sandpaper allowed me to smooth these pretty well and knock off any loose paint in preparation for primer. To the right, that box holds the roof fuse.

And here we are looking forward from that same spot, slightly later in the afternoon after the sun had set. I used a wire wheel to clean off the rooftop ventilators (there are four - these three plus one underneath the roof boards) so now everything atop the roof that isn't canvas is ready to be cleaned off, primed, and painted.

While I had the wire wheel with me, I also cleaned up the car's front bumper, which was needle-chipped in June. I also sanded down the Bondo on the left side of the car, but it was too cold to apply more.

In other news, Greg and Good Nick in the DC Line Department were using the hi-rail bucket truck shown here to take down the trolley wire over track 41. This is necessary to extend the building east, of course. The wire was taken down as far east as the switch to track 40.

The area east of Barn 4 is practically unrecognizable. This is the view looking out the door at the southeast corner of the car shop; to the right is the area that until recently was the asphalt parking lot, but within the past week that was torn up and graded. Tracks 42 and 43 are also gone, while the bucket truck is shown on track 41, the inspection pit lead.

Inside the barn, it's almost as torn up. The east half of track 42 is gone, and most of track 41 between the pit and the center of the barn has also been removed. IRM's Track and B&G Department volunteers have been hard at work on this, as have (of course) the car shop workers who have been frantically cleaning all our "stuff" out of the way of the encroaching progress.

Before the sun set, I snapped this photo of the UP rotary. It's being set up for a light show that promises to be quite spectacular. Make sure that you and your friends all reserve tickets for Happy Holiday Railway before they're all gone so that you can see it for yourself! There were a bunch of volunteers working on HHR prep over the weekend, from getting the bi-level train ready to stringing lights to setting up displays around the property.

After dark, the work continued. Here, Nick is up in the bucket using the hoist to lower those long pieces of conduit while Joel and Greg are down on the ground helping to guide the process. The conduit, and that box leaning against the pole, made up the 600-volt switch for trolley power to the pit. These parts have been safely stowed until they can be reinstalled about 100' further east after the barn is extended.