Seats Away!

Frank writes...

There's been a lot of progress on the CA&E curve-sider seat project since the last blog update! A huge THANK YOU goes out to Jon Fenlaciki, who towed a trailer into Chicago last week to pick up the custom-woven seat material right after it arrived in town. He took it over to the upholstery shop in Bellwood, and then on Sunday he met me out at the museum to get to work in the 451.

The plan is to remove the seats from the 451, get them restored, put these seats into the 460, get the 460's seats restored, and then put those into the 451 - hopefully, after we've repainted the 451's interior while the seats were out. Hopefully that makes sense! Each seat back is held in with three machine screws through the tube along the frame top and anywhere from zero to five wood screws driven in sideways from underneath the cushions. Once we got into a rhythm, the work went pretty quickly.

We're holding onto the leatherette antimacassars because it's not part of the scope of work we gave the upholstery shop, and because not all the cars will get them back. These were installed by the CA&E sometime around 1950 or so, we believe. As such, the 453 and 460 - which are being restored to end-of-service condition - will get the antimacassars back, but the 451, which is being restored to its condition around 1947-1948, won't. Here, Jon is pulling tacks out of a particularly stubborn antimacassar.

And here are half a car's worth of seat backs and cushions loaded onto Jon's trailer. After this photo was taken we tarped everything and tied it down securely with ratchet straps. I'm happy to report that Jon dropped these seats off at the upholstery shop today (Monday morning).

Here's the 451's interior with many of its seats gone. You can see where the paint is flaking off the walls and ceiling, but in general, the car is in remarkably good shape. These cars have no appreciable rust at all; they were only 12 years old when retired, the railroad took care of them after retirement because they hoped to sell them, and Trolleyville kept them indoors for their entire preservation career.

What else was happening around the property? It was the second day of a highly successful "Chicago & North Western Weekend," and on Saturday the C&NW Historical Society's archives and museum building on Main Street was dedicated to great interest and fanfare. Things were a little lower key on Sunday, but the 1630 did make its inaugural main line (test) trip of the year. And over at the Hoffman Garage, the Trolley Bus gang was working on affixing more accoutrements to our newly restored Milwaukee Marmon.

Up on the rooftop, Richard was bolting down the trolley hooks and the saddle they're mounted to.

Over at 50th Avenue, Douglas Park service was being provided by C&NW 1518. The first GP7 ever built has seen a LOT of work go into it the past few years, including quite a bit of exterior paint and - as of just recently - interior paint as well.

The cab has been completely restored and repainted and was open for visitors on Sunday. The restoration job is beautiful and involved a lot of backdating to return the engine to essentially original condition.

At the end of the afternoon, before dinner, I grabbed the can of vermilion orange paint and started doing some touch-up on the 63. Trim rollers are great for doing the large areas but I still need a brush for the nooks and crannies. Zach snapped the above photo of yours truly.

And here's how the car looks at the moment. I'll still need to use a brush to do the edging around the standee windows, not to mention the doors, but soon enough the car will turn orange from the belt rail to the roof. And then we'll start in with second coats, not to mention the ends and the other side. "Quickie" paint job is a relative term.