Sunday Photo Gallery

Frank writes...

I was out on Sunday for more work on the 460 seat project. I managed to snap photos of a number of different projects to document recent progress.

Perhaps the most exciting news is that the storage building extension at the south end of the property is going up. This spring is expected to see three buildings erected down at the south end: this extension, a new standalone storage building, and Barn 15.

Many thanks to Richard and also to Jimmy, both of whom helped get two more seats installed in the 460. These included the first of the bulkhead, or partition, seats to be redone, shown here. These are a bit narrower than the regular seats and don't rotate. We also installed the last redone rotating seat in the smoker, visible in the right corner.

Over in Barn 4, a crew of people including Joel, Ted, and later Jeron were working on inspecting the 3142. This involved replacing some worn pins in the brake rigging, which should reduce "slop" in the system and reduce wear. Shown here is the new wire trough over Track 41, which was installed by the B&G crew. The last sections will be installed soon and will bring the wire underneath the "stowed open" position of the overhead door. At the roll-up door itself, we'll install a flip-up wire bridge which we obtained a little while back so that the wire is continuous when the roll-up door is open.

Over in the lean-to extension, Jim has embarked on the thankless task of sorting our vast collection of fasteners so that they can be stored in an organized and accessible fashion. Let us be the first to thank him for this valuable work!

In Barn 8, Richard is making rapid progress on the rail display. He's added some of the rail to the second shelf, so I'll try and get a photo of that once it's all set up. In the meantime, you can read some of the interesting history on the placards in the lower shelf.

Joel also pointed out that the last of the 3142's seats were varnished, as shown above. These didn't need to have new rattan installed, but they were looking a bit worn, so some fresh varnish spruces them up nicely and helps protect them going forward.

And finally, this photo isn't mine, nor was it taken Sunday. Jon Fenlaciki sent in this photo of Buzz taken on Saturday of him lettering a wooden mail box he made for Indiana Railroad 65. This was mounted on the motorman's console just inside the front door, behind the fare register, and is thought to have been used for company mail. Let it not be said that IRM volunteers aren't sticklers for details!