Preparation Takes Many Forms

Today involved preparation for swapping trucks for the 36, operating the 319, painting the 409, and lettering the cars.The first thing to do was to make sure everything we needed had been loaded and was on its way to Connecticut. More about that later.

On the roof of the 319, I bolted down the second trolley base and made the connections to the cables, so it's ready to install poles when we get a chance. I did some cleaning inside the car. I talked to Nick about lettering and gave him the stencils we have used for the blue cars. More about that later, too. Finally, I sanded down another window and painted two of them.

Over at Barn 2, work is nearly complete on preparing the 409 for painting. It looks to me like they're doing a very thorough and careful job.





At some point while it was in Cleveland, all of the brass lift tabs for the 319's windows disappeared. I've taken a sample to a foundry to have new ones made, but they don't seem to take us too seriously. In the meantime, if the car is going to operate, we need some way to raise the windows. So I bought a few bags of these little wooden knobs at a hobby store for $3. They're not meant to look like anything, but they will be useful until the correct fittings can be installed.



And if you're interested, here are the trucks we got from East Troy. These are the two I mentioned last time, with wooden bolsters. They have GE 74 motors. The bolster on the left has pretty much rotted away, but it could be replaced easily.



I forgot to mention that in order to load these trucks, our guys had to bring their own locomotive, since there's no trolley wire where the trucks were stored. So the Joy 2 was loaded onto a flatbed and taken up to East Troy. It's now safely back at IRM. And many thanks to Norm Carlson and our friends at East Troy for the trucks and electrical equipment!


And here's a truck that was under the L5. The L5 is of interest because the TM created a steeplecab on top of a Hicks-built flat car. Unfortunately, it was scrapped many years ago. These trucks are also a TM design. This one lost its motors, and also its brasses. So it now has wooden bearings. Wood -- what can't it do?