Fresh Paint Up Top

Frank writes...

My goal for Sunday was to get a first coat of Tile Red roof paint onto the 18, and it ended up taking pretty much all the time I had between when I arrived and when it was time to head out to (a late) dinner.

Above are the "before" photos, taken after I wrapped the sides of the car in thin plastic to prevent the paint from running down the sides of the car. The specially formulated linseed oil-based canvas paint we use for roofs is very thin, kind of the texture of milk, so runs are inevitable. Jimmy helped a bit with hanging the plastic.

And here are the "after" photos, though the light wasn't great at this point. I used up all two gallons of roof paint I had and ended up just slightly short, so a small section around the ladder (obviously the last section to do - I don't want to "paint myself into a corner" up there!) didn't get done. We weren't sure how much of this would soak in. But that's not a big deal, as it will need one or two more coats anyway. Large swaths of the roof had discolored nearly to black, so that will take more of this thin roof paint to cover. I left a note for our paint guru, Pete, requesting more roof paint. Thanks also to Joel for helping move cars around so that I had space to access the 18 all the way around.

What else was going on? Well, besides the Tile Red paint going onto the 18's roof, it was red, red, red. First off, when I arrived, the 451 was sitting outside in Yard 7. It had been switched out of the way to retrieve the C&NW bay window caboose so that it could be displayed for the UP picnic on Saturday. I believe the Diesel Department will be switching the 451 back into the barn, but it sure looked nice out in the sun. Work is currently underway to create lettering stencils for this car.

And then the London bus showed up. You read that correctly: there's currently a London double-decker bus at IRM. Zach and Greg purchased this thing last year and with Richard's help it was driven from its home south of Chicago up to Union on Sunday. As soon as it arrived, it was mobbed by curious IRM members.

Here it is in front of the diner, though of course it's running "wrong main" for a British bus. It's going to be on display for Vintage Transport Extravaganza next Sunday and also for Bus Day in September.

One of the proud owners of the bus, Zach, in the driver's cab.

And in other news, our old IRM App that was developed back in 2013 has now been replaced by a professionally developed app called IRM eCard. Our original app, which we dubbed IRMA, actually dropped off the Android app store a couple of years ago because it was too outdated, and our volunteer developer was never able to get the Apple version finished. With a number of "roundels" still on our signage, as shown above, I figured that at this point it couldn't hurt to try and do something with them.

With the new website roster, I was able to add the historic articles from the old IRMA - which had always been tied to particular pieces of equipment anyway - to the website roster listings. From there, it was a simple matter to generate QR codes, print them out, and laminate them. The first few were glued over the old plastic IRMA roundels in use in Barn 7 on Sunday evening. Scanning these with your smartphone will take you directly to the same content it did with IRMA, but now it's sending you to the roster on the IRM website. I'll try and continue substituting these QR codes in place of the old IRMA roundels as the summer progresses.

Nothing newsworthy here, I just thought the 1518 and wooden caboose looked nice lit by the warm glow of the 50th Avenue platform lights.

And in another nighttime shot, you can see Tim's recent progress on the 1808, which now has roof boards and trolley bases up on the roof.