The Fabulous Fifties

Saturday was our "50's Day", maybe the first ever, and it went very well.  The weather was great and we had a large crowd of visitors.  Both steam locomotives were running again, along with the Zephyr, as seen below.

The 1630 backing out onto the wye to pick up the coach train.

The Zephyr on its way to the main, past several 50's automobiles.

The open car ran a few trips in revenue service.

And the 460 was out with its nice new roof.  Noah was the Student Motorman.

The interior of the car looks great.  The smoker was repainted over the winter, as mentioned here, and the main compartment is still quite good.

And a better view of the roof.  We can never have too many pictures of that roof....

Meanwhile, on Main Street the lineup of cars makes a big difference.

And to add to the festivities, Elvis himself showed up!

It was better in person.  You just had to be there.

But that's enough rock 'n roll for today.  Let's get back to Museum activities.  Perhaps most exciting for us in the Car Dept., the Barn 4 extension is going up!

Out on the mainline, back in the 50's wooden L cars were still providing passenger service.

And here's the Shay, powering a freight train.

You get, oh, let's say three guesses as to what Tim Peters was doing...

John brought out his family (not shown) for a picnic, and to show off the 306.  It looks great!

I spent most of my time reinstalling the third-rail beams on the 308.  I couldn't have done it without the help of Tim Wills.  It's a lot harder to get them back in place than it was to remove them!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Tim, but his help was much appreciated.

Finally, here's something we haven't had for a quite a while: a progress update on the Electroliner!  Steve Sanderson, his son and daughter, and John Arroyo were hard at work.

The west end compartment is nearly complete and looks great.

John and Emily installing the door:

There's lots of hardware on the car, all of which has been carefully cleaned and polished:

The diner section:

This door needed a little more muscle:

Steve was explaining all the things that need to be done in order to complete the ceiling.  There's lots of complicated stuff up there because of the air conditioning system, among other things.

So the Fabulous Fifties was a real blast.  Just wait till you see what we have up our sleeve next!!!