June 21, 2011

Hello Everyone

We had a good weekend this past weekend with work getting accomplished throughout the museum.  In the shop on Saturday, it was a mixed bag.  Work was interupted to fix motor leads on both 4 and 1850.  Both cars were repaired and returned to service.  2 different compressors were brought in to the shop for servicing.  One of the two will be used for 355. 

Work continued on the lathe setup with most of the tracing attachment now mounted on the lathe.  Welding was done on the mounting base.  We are now so close to finally starting to turn the wheels for 836. 

A while back we agreed to give one of the electric trolley buses to another museum in exchange for shipping trolley car wheels (16 new wheels) from the west coast to us.  Work started on getting the bus raised up to mount the tires on which will allow the bus to be loaded on a trailer and moved out of the museum.  We still have two other trolley buses, with one presently in the collection and the second for parts.

65 has been sitting in the visitor center for some time with very intermittent work occuring on her.  In order to help expedite this project, and at the same time get our restoration program back on track, I am taking on 65 as a project.  My hope is to get as many people involved in the project that I can.  While 65 will not be a complete restoration project, we will be restoring the interior of the car to look as good as we can reasonably accomplish.  The remaining interior woodwork that has not been refinished will be, the seats bases cleaned up and painted, seats recovered in new rattan, etc.   
I am going to be scheduling work days for this project (roughly once every 3-4 weeks), with the first day being Saturday July 9, 2011.  I will be at the museum by 8:00 A.M., and plan a number of projects for that day.  We have woodwork to do on the roof still, along with the removal of the interior seats, which will allow us room to work on the interior woodwork.  While we certainly want this car in service for our 75th anniversary in 2015, I am optimistic we will have the car in service well before then.  I will be going through my email lists to contact people who have expressed interest in working on the car previously, but please, if you are interested  contact the museum office and let us know, or email me.  I will be compiling an email list of people to help keep everyone up to date on work. 

Also, planning has begun on Rails to the Darkside.  We can always use more help, particularly more adults in the visitor center.  If you are interested in helping out, please contact either myself or the office. 

Take care and enjoy the warm weather.

Galen