Fresh Lettering for AX545

Frank writes...

Sunday was a rainy and foggy day, with volunteers taking down Christmas lights and other displays from the recently ended - and very successful - Happy Holiday Railway 2025 event.

My focus for the day was lettering our air compressor wagon, AX545. This has been painted green by Mike S. but it was my job to letter it.

I'm fairly happy with the result. The most annoying thing was that the lettering paint was thin enough that it will need a second coat, though these photos don't make it as obvious as it is in person. I'm also not entirely happy with how the CTA emblem looks, but this is based off what we traced from the original, so there you go.

Anyway, the wheels are still in primer and there are some parts of the compressor mechanism that haven't been painted, but AX545 is getting close to having the repainting work completed. 

In other news, Will and Jimmy made more progress on NJT 4. It looks like the guys completed wheel #5 (actually the right wheel on the #3 axle) Saturday, as shown in the above photo. They then tackled the penultimate wheel, the right wheel on the #2 axle. This evidently included Jimmy countersinking the torque arm bracket holes, as shown below, for replacement of studs with bolts. By dinnertime, this wheel change had been completed in record time. Seven down, one to go!

In other news, Greg was working on hauling in lights and other displays (you can see some of the HHR "wildlife" in the compressor photos above), after which he and Brian switched CTA 3142 over to the inspection pit for some post-HHR maintenance work. They also put the BRC caboose, which had been spotted at the south end of the Yard 8 connector track, back in the barn before the predicted snow hits this week. And thanks to Brian for helping me retrieve a feed valve and J governor that he is planning to rebuild; the feed valve will go on the 319, while the governor will (I believe) be a working spare.

And at the end of the day, I cleaned up and primed the last significant parts of the spare grid box. These grid box parts have the laudable tendency to magically turn gloss black during the week when I'm not looking, so fingers crossed! But otherwise, I'll spray them black next weekend and that should complete this little side project.