Sunday, August 27, 2023

Saturday Operations

It's now just a week until Labor Day Weekend.  A lot will be happening over the weekend, which you can read all about on the IRM website, but in particular we'll be running the CA&E wood cars on Saturday evening until about 10 PM.  You won't want to miss it -- nighttime operations are always a blast.  I spent some time on Saturday getting things ready, checking the oil, and so on.  Nothing much to take a picture of.  But several other things were going on, as always:

In one of many current B&G projects, a new (antique) traffic signal is being installed on the northwest corner of Depot and Central, just like the one on the southeast corner.


But in railroad news, the Pennsy bobber was moved from Barn 10 over to Barn 9, where it will be on display.  It really looks great.  The brake system still needs some work, so it will not be used in service until that gets fixed, but otherwise it's a real gem.  




And the Mt. Harvard was being switched out:



The track department was replacing ties on this stretch of the car line alongside Barn 9:



Among other things, the upper part of the 1808 has been painted:




This would have been a nice picture, but somehow I got something on my camera, which was later cleaned off.  Anyway, the 1630 was pulling the coach train, the 431 and 460 were providing interurban service, and the Rock Island 4506 was in Diesel Take the Throttle service all day.



Finally, I haven't done anything on the Jewell Road shelter for a couple of months because it's been too hot and sunny.  But today was much better, so I did some more scraping.  A lot of the paint still won't come off, so the changes aren't obvious.  But I'll keep picking away at it.  I also have a couple of pictures of the interior, such as they are.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randall,

Looking at the first picture of the shelter, I noticed a square piece of metal screwed into the siding above the door. Did the shelter once have a light fixture mounted over the door?

Ken MacLeod

Randall Hicks said...

That's hard to say. Neither State Road nor Green Valley (the two other similar buildings) had a light over the door, but it could be a later modification, or just a patch. I should be able to tell by looking at the inside, if I can remember.

What I really need is an AC power line out from Barn 11 to run a pad sander.

Raphael said...

After thinking a while about where to put the Jewell Rd station, one Idea was on the end of Museum Dr, where it connects to Olson Rd. Seeing as that is along the streetcar loop expansion, it would make for a stop for some of the volunteers to get on and off to the facilities the public doesn't often see. Only downside, it could leave the building exposed to potential vandals.