Windy City West

If IRM were a sailing ship, we would be making rapid progress on our journey home from Cathay. As it is, however, the recent strong winds made me worry about the tarps again, so I checked on the 321. It's basically OK; part of the east end had come loose, so I attached another clamp and tightened things up. No harm has been done.

Most of the rest of my time was spent sanding down two more 319 windows, as seen here. Only one to go. But it gets pretty tiresome, I must admit. I also wire-wheeled all the old paint off the wrecking tools that will be installed in the 319.

Every car seems to have had a different arrangement of wrecking tool box. Fortunately, the 308's was never touched, so I'm using it as a guide to what things should look like. The tools will be painted with the basic interior wall color.

I also looked at the interior of the 277 to remind myself of its condition. The Illinois Terminal traction meet will be held at IRM next April, and we want the 277 and 518 to be as ready as we can make them. We need to decide what can be done by then. Expert help will be welcome.

And in switching news from last Sunday, the Rio open car has been moved into Barn 8. Here it is, as viewed from the platform of the 234. Keeping a tarp on it was harder than we thought, so with some shuffling, we are able to make better use of the available indoor storage space. This is a restoration project for the future, but it's good to have nonetheless.