Thanks for the very kind description of what my dad and I have been up to, Stewart. We wouldn't be half as far along without all the help you and everyone at Sheepscot has given us to keep us going, and for you and Steve keeping us plied with materials. The newly opened Fred's Slightly Used Lumber Emporium has also been indispensable.
Stewart's new sign really is something special. It really makes the front of the shop look sharp.
On Monday, we started by pulling the aluminum roof off of the car. We had that mostly done by 10. In this picture, the roof is already off, and the brown area is just the unpainted portion of the letter boards.
Rot had really set in along the length of the car, just below where the roofing ended. Then we assessed the condition of the underlying roofing, which also needed some help. For each of the 6 letter board sections, the top 2.5-3" were cut off. That was then replaced with fresh material which was cut and planed to match. Monday saw the first of these replacements go up. On Tuesday, we took another look at the roof- 80% of it is in fine shape. But the areas underneath the seams of the aluminum roofing were not staying dry. Oddly enough, there had been a major repair done to the southern 7 feet of the car some time before it came to the railway, but that portion was in by far the worst shape. So on Tuesday, under Steve Z's advisement, I began to replace 84 ft. of 2 inch boards for the worst sections of the roof, and that continued through the end of the day on Wednesday.
(Note, a couple pieces had already been removed by me. The rot was limited to the areas under the seams of the roofing, along the support arches)
Meanwhile, my dad was plugging away at the letter board sections, and got two more done on Tuesday and Wednesday. Each one had some combination of bolts, adhesive, screws, and nails, in seemingly increasing degrees of difficulty for removal. A couple of the letter boards had splits which were exacerbated by the removal, so we glued and reinforced the splits before remounting the letter boards They will also be caulked before paint goes on to prevent any moisture buildup.
Thursday saw a not so brief trip to Liberty tool, but we managed to get a 4th letter board refurbished and remounted.
Today was a flurry of activity, with the last two letter board sections being repaired and remounted on the car. Then a 1" x 2.5" shadow board was attached to the uppermost edge of the letter boards. This will accent the lines of the car, while (more importantly) keeping water further away from the passengers and wood. A drip edge has also been mostly mounted to enhance this effect. Paint scraping has also begun, and as Stewart stated- there will be a fresh coat applied where needed.
I put up some more pictures
here, in case anybody was interested in seeing a little more of how things are looking. We still have some trim work left to do as well, to replace a couple of broken pieces. But it's nice to see it coming back together, and with fewer things growing out of it. I'm looking forward to seeing it back in service for the Memorial Day weekend.
