Doug Rundell reports on his and James Ham's work on Monday, 10/10/2022 to prepare one of the cars for Polar Express.

With James’ help, I was able to set up and finish the caulking of trolley board saddles on car 43 using SikaFlex-1A. What I encountered on Monday on the south end of the car was less deterioration than I saw last week further north. There were a few gaps where the caulk had embrittled and pulled away, opening a pathway for water infiltration. I’ve completed all the inspections and repairs.

Longer term, it would be great to pull off the trolley boards and really get easy access to the saddles, but that’s a major project for the very distant future.

Looking at Car 40 is that we don’t have a major water problem on the roof, and we don’t have gobs of peeling paint on the ceiling.  

Car 45 has more significant issues. I hope to get to that after getting 40/43 ready.

Doug grounds the trolley wire to the track so that he can get on top of the car with no danger of shock, even if the power is turned off.   Since the wire is continuous, grounding it on track 2 grounds it for the railroad.

Next, Doug tags out the power supply station so that no one will come by and turn on the power.

And here, Doug has tagged out the power supply building assuring additional protection.   Safety is NUMBER 1 at the Museum

Now comes the business of caulking around the areas of the roof where the trolley board brackets are mounted.