Sunday Report

Frank writes...

I didn't do a very thorough job of photographing all my activities on Sunday, but you'll get the gist. The first thing I did, not long after arriving, was meet up with a couple of volunteers from the Fox River Trolley Museum. They were picking up rolls of North Shore seat material that IRM had specially made (by the same company that made the seat material for the CA&E 450s!). Zach coordinated a joint order on behalf of IRM; FRTM didn't order any material, but the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company, Branford, and East Troy all did, so these volunteers were picking up the rolls destined for Branford and East Troy.

After that, it was time for a (hopefully final) coat of vermilion orange on the sides of the 63.

I think the color looks quite good, and I think that we've covered any underlying layers of paint effectively, but one of these days we'll need to tow it outside and look at it in the daylight to make sure. In the meantime, I am pretty sure I'm done on this thing until the spring, when it will be time to work on the striping and lettering.

After that, Will and I took the final batch of reupholstered seat cushions and backs from the shop extension over to the 460 and put them in that car. Many thanks to Will, for his help with this, and to Jon F, who picked up the seats from the upholstery shop! Over at the 460, Jeff and Joseph (the latter shown above) are working on removing and repairing many of the car's windows. The windows seem to be in okay shape, but most of the windows in the car are extremely difficult - maybe impossible - to open. That's no fun on a hot day, so it will be a huge improvement to have that fixed.

The next project was third rail beams. We have a pile of CA&E third rail beams that we acquired from Trolleyville but never rebuilt with new wood, so we brought one into the shop to compare with the patterns we just acquired from the Wendell Dillinger collection. Above, you can see an original beam and one of our patterns underneath it. It appears that the cast parts on the third rail beam are cast steel, rather than cast iron. We've already made contact with an area foundry so we'll let you know what transpires. Thanks to Greg and Richard for their help in retrieving and analyzing this third rail beam.

So, what else was going on? I had been warned before driving out not to drive back behind the shop. As seen here, the paving crew is supposed to be paving the access road around the east end of the Barn 4 extension on Tuesday, so we don't want grooves in the gravel. The paving will include the parking lot, which will be bigger than the old parking lot was (in addition to being relocated about 100' further east).

Here's a view of Yard 4 east looking west toward the barn. Supposedly, the aisles in this yard are also being paved. Swanky!

Besides Jeff and Joseph working in the 460, Greg and Nick were over in Barn 2 helping the Diesel Department guys get the new bi-levels ready for Happy Holiday Railway while Brian, Jimmy, Ashton, and Will were working on air brake components. I believe this involved knocking items off the "end-of-year to-do list" that Joel created from all the comments written on the backs of the "car cards" by operators during the year. Above, Brian tests an air gauge while Kevin from the 'Liner crew, who was working on painting the inside of the west cab during the day, looks on.

In other exciting news, a crew of volunteers has been finishing the striping on Cleveland PCC 4223! This car was painted 14 years ago - boy, does time fly - but at the time, the striping and lettering was left incomplete, with only the front-end striping done. Now, it appears the car's livery will be completed. I can't wait to see it! Here's a point of trivia: with this work, all four of the museum's ex-Shaker Heights cars have received new paint within the last year or so. Huh.