Steady Progress

Frank writes…

There were three of us working on the 451 for much of the day on Sunday, so a lot got done. Many thanks to Ashtin and Joseph for all their hard work!

The MVP for the day was Ashtin; before I arrived, Ashtin got Joseph set up wire-wheeling baggage racks and then grabbed his own wire wheel and attacked the smoker. Joseph made great progress on the baggage racks, while Ashtin completed wire-wheeling pretty much all the wall and ceiling panels in the smoker that had previously been needle-chipped. There are still a few edges we need to address, and we want to lightly sand the Masonite panels under the windows, but the smoker is most of the way toward being ready for paint.

I spent most of my time in the main compartment, needle-chipping more of the ceiling and wall panels. At one point, Ashtin and I took a break and went over to the 453 to compare the Futura lettering artwork that Buzz has painstakingly recreated to the original lettering still visible under that car's paint. The verdict: it looks great! Before too long, we hope to cut vinyl masks so we can spray the lettering onto the 451. After all that, Ashtin spent a while needle-chipping the partition between the main compartment and smoker. After dinner, Greg helped me to make progress on removing the partition door, though we still need to detach it from the floor. And I was told that the Saturday guys had installed the air piping from the air compressor to the tanks. We still need to add drain cocks and air gauges before the car can be pumped up, but rapid progress is being made.

As usual, there was plenty of other work going on. Joel was hard at work cleaning out the old "roof booth" area of the barn, moving spare parts out of the newly usable air brake room, and generally moving and sorting parts. Greg and Jimmy were out making overhead wire repairs at the west end of the railroad. And Good Nick was working on the "small" substation, shown above. I briefly helped him remove the breaker, pictured on the cart. It will be replaced by the newer and more advanced model shown last week.

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