Moving along

I was able to get a good deal done on the 205 over the past couple of days. Tuesday night I spent some time going through the car and removing objects that were obviously not needed - pieces of wooden blocking, plywood, old coffee cans and even a decrepit wooden door whose origins are unknown. Wednesday I spent some time helping switch the 205 around to aid with the 3142 motor work and also got to do some more needle-chipping. As seen in the Kirk Warner photo at right, taken of me sitting down on the job, I needle-chipped the car's two HL switch group boxes; these can now be primed and painted black.

I was also able to paint the roof ladder green to match the rest of the roof and painted the lower half of the east end anti-climber green as well. The photo at left shows the car at the Electric Park trolley bus turnaround on a "rare mileage" run courtesy of ComEd 4 and Henry Vincent; the newspaper masking is obvious, and will be left in place for the next week or two to allow me to (I hope) do some more primer spraying after a bit of touch sanding rough spots.

Overall, the 205 project is getting quite a bit closer to completion. Once the small amount of required re-spraying is done the car will be ready to spray paint orange, though at the moment I'd like to put that off until next spring so that the window post caps now on order can be sprayed at the same time. Some of the tasks I was hoping to get to this week, like cutting holes in the east end dash for the headlight, did not get done - but those can be accomplished in Barn 8. Measurements were taken for the wooden inserts over the end windows, which will not only allow for final installation of those windows but will also allow completion of Bondo work on the letterboard at the ends and priming of those areas. Roof work has been completed with the painting of the roof ladder, which is quite a milestone. The end is in sight! Thanks to all who helped out with switching and other work this week!