Sunday Report

Frank writes...

Sunday was the last day of the regular 2023 operating season, and the weather made it pretty obvious why. From temperatures in the 70s two weeks ago, to the 50s a week ago, it was in the 40s on Sunday and after dark we even saw a few ominous snowflakes swirling around. Harumph.

There's plenty to do on the 18, but for the moment it takes a back seat to IT 415, which is on a tight timeline to get painted before the Diesel Department needs the car's berth in the heated diesel shop back. A few of us, including Good Nick, Greg, Steven, and Jimmy, worked on putting the finishing touches on the car prior to releasing it to Jamie and the painting crew. Above, Steven is masking off the edge of the roof line.

I spent much of the afternoon masking windows on the north side of the car, as shown here. This also involved cleaning off some of the dust and crap from the "wet sand-blast" job done on the car a couple of years ago, though they'll finish cleaning all the surfaces before it gets painted, of course. Greg and later Steven added the sheets of paper in the middle of the windows.

Meanwhile, Nick was hard at work sanding around each and every rivet on the entire car. Yeesh. Did I mention that the heated shop over in Barn 2 is a pretty nice place to work on a chilly day?

There was still progress made on Shaker Heights 18, though. Thanks to Greg, who helped me schlep the seats that Frank Kehoe painted during the week from the shop over to the car. We then set a bunch of the remaining seats out on sawhorses and on the traction motors sitting in the "lean-three," as shown above, ready for Frank's next trip out. I also removed a couple of remaining bench seat backs from the car and brought them into the shop, plus I took the two recently painted windows back to the car to free up bench space in the wood shop. In the left foreground of the photo above is part of the bench seat "cushion" that goes in the center drop section, and behind it is the long, thin "seat back" from the drop section, both of which were retrieved from the 18 on Sunday.

And of course we had to stand back in awe of the new concrete in Barn 4. This is really going to be a big improvement! We need to stay off the concrete for 10 days, after which it will be sealed and can then be put to use.

In other news, Bob, Mikey, and Brian were working on machining more pins for Type M contactors for the Class B. They've now machined new components for at least 10 contactors for the locomotive, which is tremendous progress. I also saw Tim, who was working on something for the 1808; Gregg, who was splitting his time between wood for the roof of the 1702 and Lackawanna coach seats; and Joel, who was working on fixing the golf cart, among other things.

STOP THE PRESSES: As I write this on Monday evening, I've just received photos from Frank Kehoe showing the work he did today on the 18's seats.

This is exciting progress - a huge THANK YOU to Frank for all his work on the seats! In the upper photo you can see a mixture of cross seats and bench seat sections (the trapezoidal cushion in the foreground is part of the wraparound bench seat at the rear of the car) while the bottom photo shows a cushion and seatback from the drop section, shown earlier in their "before" state. Frank reports that he painted 10 cushions and there are only eight more that are currently still in the shop and yet to do.