Monday Mailbag

Now that Thomas is over until next year, it's time for some more pictures of progress in the car shop.

I bought the wood for two more third-rail beams and started putting them together.  These two will complete the set for the 451, and all of our CA&E cars will have a complete set except the 453, and that's far in the future. 

The woodworking seems to go faster each time, but for some reason the glue and paint don't dry any faster.  Maybe if I had a really big oven....

Be that as it may, a lot of progress is being made on the interior of the Michigan Electric 28, as seen here.

The front compartment is getting finished.

And then the smoker has been cleaned out.  As you can see, the floor is going to need some serious rebuilding.

And soon they plan to start unloading the main compartment.

Another important part of the Michigan Electric car is the Peter Smith coal stove, which will be located in the front compartment.  It's been nicely restored and repainted.

This stove came from a North Shore car, and the stove itself is correct, but the upper door was a North Shore type, which wouldn't be correct for Michigan Electric.

Luckily, we can replace it with a Peter Smith door, which will be historically accurate.  

Ah, much better!  Fritz just finished restoring it.

And by the way, Norm reports that good progress is being made on the next two volumes of his history of the Michigan Electric.  So that's something to really look forward to!

Across the walkway, the floor of the 1268 is being completed rapidly. 

And finally, among other things the 306 crew are continuing to rebuild the electrical system.  I didn't get a picture, but they were carefully checking the resistance of each grid element.

Measuring small resistance values is a real challenge, and if you'd like a lecture on this subject from a retired physicist, just let me know!

And as usual, many other things were going on at IRM that I didn't get a chance to cover.