This coming weekend the museum while be welcoming new volunteers and veteran members to take part in viewing and developing plans to repair the terrible vandalism. All are welcome, and it will be a very low key, come and go event.

Jeff Bennett will be at the car barn Saturday and Sunday, from 10-4, working with visitors, guiding tours, and helping to organize our repair efforts.

Please check in with Jeff when you arrive to say hi. This will be a very informal event, and we hope to see you there!

Any questions about the event, please contact Jeff directly at:

Jeffb60MD@aol.com

Welcome Barbara Bennett to the team! She was a great help today with 304. 

With some window work being done, it was great to have her working on the inside, while I worked the outside!

What a great day of progress on 304, sprucing her up for River Fest!

Thanks to all that helped, and welcome aboard Barbara!

Today, working on the SE door of the car, it was noticed that the floor inside the car had a metal area in front of the door, with a hinge on the inner edge. Where there's a hinge, there's something to open... Who could resist!

As you can see the is a spring loaded switch under this panel. Once all the gunk was cleaned out, and the mechanism freed up, it was easy to see that this metal floor area just in front of the door, has an automatic door control! How cool! When you stand on the metal plate now, you can hear and feel a click of the switch, which I can only assume, under the right circumstances would open that door. 

We have many other things to address with the car, but I had no idea this was here, and I look forward to it working correctly someday!

LIGHTS !!!!

All that time and effort paid off with the Edison Cells on this car. They are all now in tip top shape. Today we connected trolley power to the car, and tested some things. We ran the compressor and made sure the batteries were charging. Also I couldn't resist, I had to turn on the marker lights! Progress folks!

Even did a standing brake test. We have some mud wasps to evict, but over, what a great day for 4451!

Cliff, with KRB Construction, is finishing up installing the new tack strips onto 4451. As you can also see in this picture, 458 has all of it's tack strips installed along the sides. There is a method to the madness here! We want to keep each car at the same stage, in an effort to continue to learn and work with the set up from one car to the next

4451 will be out on the rails before we know it! Paint, ceiling, roof, wiring, and windows are coming along really well, so today I had the goal of getting the batteries serviced on this car, so we can start testing controls, compressor, etc.

The 4000 series had the battery box in the middle of the car with very limited access!

I started with removal of the top, and folding the sides down

Not much room for inspection and servicing

Quickly the decision was made to remove the four battery boxes in order to service the batteries on a bench. Some contortion was required to get these out, but it was necessary!

Good call, as this is one of the issues found

Looks to be freeze damage, but either way, this one is toast! There was another cell found to be leaking at the bottom from rust. 

A quick run to our storage, and two replacement cells were ready

So now as I am servicing the cells, one at at time, I start to charge some cells. I must admit that I felt a bit like a mad scientist !

Soon I have all the cells serviced and ready to charge the entire bank as a series, to equal 36 volts.

So far so good. Only one cell is really weak, but we will see what tomorrow brings.

And the fruits of the day's labor! 

24 cells with just a little bit of a charge, were putting out about 34 volts, and lit this 38v bulb !!!  Tomorrow I will cycle these cells through some charge and discharge cycles, and hope to reinstall them into the car!

Don't mind the lawn chair and fans, it was quite a hot one today and I sat between two fans, on the chair and just worked away! No way anything outside was happening today!

Great job Chuck!

Sometimes it's hard to tell who's more tough and versatile, Chuck, or Case!  LOL

While we all wait for the restoration of 7, tarping it is needed to help preserve it.

Big thanks to all the folks that are getting 7 covered. 

Whomever is out there waiting to sponsor this car's restoration, now is the time!

With all the interior lighting completely exposed, for the roof and ceiling replacement, not is the time to check and repair all the ceiling lighting.

Before 4451 went out of service last, it has suffered a short in the interior lighting, and was not used since. 

Today Chuck and Jeff were able to map the entire lighting system, mark everything and find the short. (both snap switches above the motorman controls were faulty)

Careful checking of each and every wire in the system, has led us to be confident "lighting her up" once the ceiling is back in!

Huge thanks to Fred for the wiring diagram!

In the mean time, it is being covered, by the regular dedicated volunteers...

Chuck, Doug, Mike, and Joe have been working on tarping 7

We are very happy to have Kasia with K Creative back with us to help paint the interior of 4451. 

Work on 4451 as observed Monday.  

01 priming of walls & window posts.  

02 Doug & Mike inspect carlines and window post priming.  

3 Ceiling panels and loose windows primed both sides so they can be installed.