Seats and Windows

The first thing I did today was to move all of the seat cushions from the 319 into the baggage compartment of the 277 for temporary storage. This will make it much easier to repaint the floor, and also makes it easier to oil up the mechanisms and make sure that all the seat backs can be reversed easily. Six to eight of the cushions need to be reupholstered. I can do this at home, and I have material left over from the 308. The top cushion is one I've already done.

Gerry Brookins thought the floors should be painted red (Jim Blower did some of the cars) but I'm not sure why. I know they would paint the decks red on a man o' war so it wasn't obvious how much blood was being spilled during a battle, but we won't have any cannonballs coming through the 319, so we'll go back to the CA&E brown color.


Some of the seat backs had cable ties attached at Trolleyville so they couldn't be reversed, but I think this was only because the seat cushions were bad at that particular location. All of the mechanisms seem to work OK, and I started oiling them. There are no broken castings, so we're in better shape than on the 309.

This shows one of the seat frames. This one has a unique feature: a metal clamp holding it to the floor, since it must have worked loose from the wall. This must have been installed by the CA&E. You will notice that the wall is constructed with inserts so that the seat cushion can be about 2" wider than the back. On the earlier cars the wainscoting is made of long flat planks, and the backs and cushions are the same width.

I also installed the two ceiling globes, as seen here. They were removed for safekeeping when the car was moved from Cleveland. For some reason there's no globe in the smoker fixture, and no way to mount one if we had it.

Then I did some painting in the shop, which I had all to myself. 15 window shade tracks were brought over from the car, sanded down, and repainted with butterscotch. These parts were made by the CA&E in 1953 when the car was converted to single sash, and they used pine to save money. This wood is easily gouged, so even though they weren't in service very long, the parts have a lot more damage than corresponding parts made of mahogany or oak as on the 308 and 309. But it is what it is.

Charlie came through the shop and talked to me about paint. A couple of years ago, John Cloos gave us two bottles of paint samples from Wheaton Shops for the Brilliant Red and Aurora Gray, and Charlie was able to put them to good use. We're using them to match the correct paint for all four cars currently in line to be painted. Jamie has been of great help in this, by the way -- thanks! And I agreed that the 319 should be part of the Centari Empire. (OK, Frank will get that, even if nobody else does!) We'll use the same premium paint as the steel cars. This is expensive, however, and donations are still needed!

And then six windows. On three of these this is the second coat, on the others it's the first. Six down, 23 to go. Ugh!

Meanwhile, Charlie reported that one side of the 451 is now completely sanded down, and most of the Bondo has been applied, so he's making good progress. We're rolling!