All Ahead Full on the 451

Frank writes...

I was out of town last weekend, when the 451 was switched over to Barn 4, and by the time I got out to the museum on Sunday, work was already well underway.

Greg has been heading up interior work and has made a ton of progress, even taking some time off during the week. He needle-chipped the panel over the windows on the north side of the car, visible above, and removed the light fixtures in the smoker to make it easier to chip and paint the ceiling. He also took down the wood trim strip below the ad rack, which you can see at the top right corner of the above photo, and on Sunday he was working on removing more wooden trim so that those pieces can be stripped on the bench. I was only able to stick around for a couple of hours and spent much of the time needle-chipping, including chipping the partition panel visible above.

Ted was working inside the car, taking paint off the partition as well. The color isn't real vibrant, but you can see here that underneath the end-of-service tan is medium blue paint, the same as what's in the 460. It seems the 451 was built with a blue interior and the CA&E later repainted it tan. Since this car is being backdated to its condition around 1947-1948, the interior will be repainted blue.

Here's Ted after the partition panel was wire-wheeled to nearly a mirror finish. Behind his head, you'll note the panel over the south windows in the smoker is in primer; this was stripped and primed by Charlie way back in 2010, at the same time the 451's exterior was painted.

By the time I had to leave, we'd gotten both panels on the smoker-main compartment stripped and I had started needle-chipping the ceiling in the smoker. Working over your head is never fun, but all things considered, it's going quickly. Fortunately, all the steel in this car is in very good condition. In the photo, Greg is unscrewing wood trim around the door while Ted is wire-wheeling the partition.

Outside the car, Ashtin was working diligently on wire-wheeling baggage racks for the car. Most of the racks don't have any paint underneath the tan, so they were likely removed from the car when its interior was repainted, which makes sense. In a few spots, there's light green evident underneath the tan, but none of the 450s had green interiors. My best guess is that it's some kind of primer. We'll need to look closely for clues on whether these were originally painted silver, as the ones in the 460 are now, or blue.

Here are the next two racks to be wire-wheeled; these were all removed from the car by Greg during the week. In other 451 news, there were a handful of seats in the car - both originals and re-upholstered ones - and I removed those. A few will go over to the 453, and those were put on a pallet so we can take them over to Barn 13 when the weather is no longer in the single digits. Progress is also being made on the car's air compressor, which was removed in August 2020 for valve work. Dan was working on this on Saturday, while Greg has fabricated a new handle for the air compressor cover. And a few other miscellaneous to-do items were being checked off, like Greg finding replacement gauge lights for the air gauges at the ends of the car. He also said those gauges had been calibrated, so that's good.

I'll just take a moment to point out that the work being done on the 451 right now is possible in large part because it's in the heated portion of Barn 4, something that didn't exist a year ago. Because of the investment in heated shop space, we're able to make rapid progress on this car despite the single-digit temperatures outside. In addition, keep in mind that the impetus for this work on the 451 was the successful "Take a Seat" fundraiser we ran. The rest of the seats for the 451 are at the upholstery shop now - they told us earlier this month that they're aiming to have them done by the end of February - and one of the big reasons to repaint the car's interior now is so we can put those nice, newly upholstered seats back in their frames. Thanks to everyone who has contributed!