The Seats Are In

Frank writes...

We hit a milestone with the 460 on Sunday: all the seats being replaced in this round are now installed in the car! Many thanks to Richard, who worked with me to get two more seats put in. The day's results are shown below: the #2 end "corner single" and the rotating "railfan seat" facing the end window of the car.

Now, the job isn't exactly complete, even on the 460 - never mind the 451 and 453, which will come next! I still need to go through and drive a bunch of upholstery tacks into these; the leatherette antimacassars have decorative upholstery tacks along the back of each seat. I also need to clean up any old tacks, bolts, threads, fuzz, and miscellaneous debris from the project.

There are also two seats we haven't done yet. The "corner single" at the #1 end and the seat against the toilet compartment at the #2 end haven't yet been replaced because we don't have the correct reupholstered seats. We're saving a few original seats in reasonably good condition, selected from across the three curve-siders. These will all be relocated to the 453 for continued service, but one of the seats being saved is a corner seat in the 451, and since that seat didn't go out to get reupholstered, we don't have a reupholstered corner seat to go into the 460. And that seat against the toilet compartment is different in the 460 than the other two cars because they don't have toilet compartments! But soon we will replace these two seats as well and the 460 will have a full complement of newly redone seats.

Doesn't it look nice? I'm not sure whether the 460 will run on the 6th for opening day, but it should be running the following weekend for Bunny Trolley Hop..

In other news, the big project for the weekend was inspecting the 4391, with workers including Brian, Jeron, Will, Dan, Ashten, and Joel (sorry if I missed anyone!). They found a resistor ribbon that had burned up and shorted to the adjacent ribbon, so those needed to be replaced. They were also working on getting the heat in the car working again. Rumors of air brake issues with this car have been greatly exaggerated. Greg and Nick were doing line work, including replacing a "No-Bo" trolley wire insulator on Station Track 2 that was "leaking" current. Joel and others were working on setting up more shelving and other improvements in the new shop extension, while Tim was hard at work on the 268, as usual