Ultimate Pumpkin Day

Frank writes...

Sunday was the last day of the 2023 Pumpkin Train event, and the weather was perfect fall weather, sunny and with highs in the upper 50s. Great working weather!

The first task was to take all of the seat cushions out of the 18 and bring them over to the car shop. We've had a willing volunteer offer to help with painting these cushions during the week (more on that later), so taking the cushions over to make this possible was a priority. Unfortunately, I failed to get any photos (d'oh!), but the two people who made this happen were Steven J. and Jimmy. Thanks to both for all their hard work!

After that, I headed over to Barn 2 to help with a priority project for the department: getting IT 415 ready to paint. Its time in the diesel shop is drawing to a close, so we need to finish the last of the prep work pronto so that it can turn traction orange. (...nah, just kidding, it will go back into apple green and cream!) Above, Steven drives screws into the newly reattached bumper shroud. This project is being headed up by Good Nick, who was working through the day - and again after dinner - on various tasks to get the car ready for paint. A number of other people have pitched in to help as well.

After dinner, I got to work painting seat backs inside the 18. These are much easier to paint in place, especially the cross seats, which I believe need to have the entire seat frame removed from the car in order to unscrew the seat back. Above is one of the upper deck "nickel seats," though I don't think they were called that in Cleveland.

And here's the first of the cross seats. I masked off the one behind it but ran out of time to actually paint it, so I'll need to do that next time. Getting fresh paint on these makes a huge difference in appearance. Oh, and we again successfully tested the heat inside the car, so that's reassuring.

There's a single longitudinal seat at the front right corner of the car, right behind the motorman's cab bulkhead, and I don't think I'd ever pulled that cushion out because when I did I was surprised to find a battery box underneath it. Four of these little old-fashioned lantern batteries were wired in, with the wires going into the wall and thence to destinations unknown. We'll have to get to work tracing these wires, or just ask our friends at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum how this system works on their car 12.

In other news, concrete has been poured for door sills at the east end of the Barn 4 extension. It's good to see progress with this!

And during the week some significant reconstruction work was done in Barn 6. To enable that, the trolley wire had to be dropped in parts of the barn, so here Joel is seen - in the dark, since this is after dinner and the AC power to the barn is still turned off - re-tensioning the wire on track 63.

A couple of windows for the 18 were on a bench in the wood shop and they look great! Of course, some wag decided to repurpose a leftover sign from ArnFest a few weeks ago... please do not help yourself...

LATE ADDITION: As I mentioned earlier, one of our weekday volunteers, Frank Kehoe, reached out and offered to help with painting seats for the 18. This is tremendously helpful, as it's pretty time-consuming to paint these properly, what with all the "nooks and crannies." On Monday, he got six cross seat cushions and two bench seat backs painted, as shown below in a photo he sent me this afternoon. Thank you, Frank!