The Heat is On

Frank writes...

Sunday was warm, in the 90s, but despite the heat and a later-than-usual arrival, I was able to get in a good deal of painting. Setting up a box fan in the 18 was certainly a life saver.

My first priority was to paint more of the seats in the 18. They were painted a kind of straw color in service, but over many years the paint has partially worn away and is very dingy. As seen above, a fresh coat of paint makes a huge difference! I did the two seats shown here with green masking tape. It takes time to work the paint into all the crevices in the rattan, so each seat back takes about an hour.

The colors here are washed out because I'd already turned off the lights and pulled the pole, but four of the five cross seats in the rear left corner of the car are now completely repainted. And all but one of the cushions in the entire car were painted last fall by Frank Kehoe; you can see one in the left foreground with a stubborn bolt (yes, these cushions are bolted in) that I haven't yet been able to remove for fresh paint. Anyway, the point here is that we plan to use the 18 in service this year, so we want to spruce up the interior for the public. The car is planned for operation this coming Sunday, the 23rd - don't miss it!

After dinner, I moved next door and put more orange paint on the 63. The job this time was taking a brush and going around all the edges on the front doors, as shown in the leftmost leaf here. I didn't get a photo at the end of the work, but you can imagine what it looks like! Over to the left of the door, it's obvious that we'll need at least one, maybe two more coats of orange; but that said, I'm not worried about obscuring that "westbound entrance" lettering because the car keeps that lettering in the orange livery, so I'm just going to go back over that with black lettering enamel.

In other news, the 714 got inspected, a brake cylinder packing cup was replaced on the 3142 late Saturday evening, and progress was made on improvements to the substation. Also, as seen above, the first freight car has made its way back to Yard 4 East.