Fender Finished

Frank writes...

Sunday it was back to work on good old car 18, and the highlight was certainly completing the Eclipse fender. This involved assembling the lengths of chain, springs, and split links of various sizes that were painted last weekend and mounting them to the fender.

Above, the fender is in the down or "service" position. This was the first time I'd rigged up the smaller chains that hold it in the raised, or "storage," position, but that worked like a charm, as shown below. Just loop the "service" lengths of chain over the shorter "storage" chains so that they're not swinging around, and voila! A huge thank you to everyone who helped on this project, especially Frank Kehoe, who did the lion's share of the work in stripping, rebuilding, and painting the fender. Watch for it, coming this summer to a streetcar loop near you!

And in other 18 news, I took two more windows over to the shop for removal of the glass, after which I heat-stripped those and one of the ones I removed a week ago. (The other window frame removed a week ago is pretty shot, so my father has agreed to rebuild it, or simply build a new one.) The three window frames were then sanded and patched up a bit with epoxy.

In other news, the south track of Barn 3 has been emptied out - rumor has it that our indefatigable Track Department may be rebuilding this track, which probably still has the same rails as it did when this barn still had electric cars in it some 40+ years ago. I snapped this usually difficult-to-get view of the Santa Fe lounge, which was recently repainted, as you can see.

Over in the shop, Joel, Mikey, Matthew, and Jimmy were finishing up the annual inspection of West Towns 141, while Nick was mostly over in Barn 2 working on the 415. The Electroliner crew was over in Barn 7 hard at work, as usual, and Mike Stauber was out, painting rebuilt doors for Kansas City PCC 755. Four of the door leaves are shown above. Two more are already done and installed on the car, leaving just two unaccounted for, though they may have been in the shop and I simply didn't notice them. And in a final bit of exciting news, it seems the electrical contractor has finished their work in the new Barn 4 extension, so with luck we may get occupancy soon. Joel is already salivating over all the new storage space!