OBRM Yardwork Updates: Rain, rain, go away, come again another day....

I was taught by my mom to say that and maybe, just maybe, it might.

So what the heck did I have to lose??
That was my mantra all of Friday night as I was attending the LIST chapter of the NRHS meeting and when I woke up before looking out the window Saturday at 6:30am.
Thankfully, mom was right and the rain held out longer than I had hoped.

At 8am I arrived to the yard to meet Rich and I unloaded a new tool for us to use. It was a simple "little red wagon" that can hold 1400 lbs and had pneumatic tires to negotiate the uneven ground.
Everyone has been saying that there had to be a better way to move stuff around and I found this in the Northern Tool catalog that I had just received. If this works out, I will order another one to modify into a welding cart for our crew as the current one has a set of small hard tires that swivel in the front and a pair of larger solid tires that are stationary in the rear and don't move as well on the ground. A real pain in the butt to most of us as it takes 2 volunteers to move around the welder.
Anyway,
Doug showed up a bit later after Rich built the wagon and I was getting the forklift, so we proceeded to move the last 15 foot turntable ties away from the west fence area and stack them near the other ties in front of #35's boiler, so we can easily load them into awaiting vehicles.
I put them up for sale on Craigslist and had quite a few responses, but only 1 person was able to show up before we opened the site to visitors at noon.
The rest were scheduled to arrive at 4pm when we closed the site, but due to the rainstorm, I had to re-schedule them for next Saturday.
Whatever we collect goes to the restoration budget that I have for the year.

When Steve & Wayne showed up, we moved onto rounding up the scrap metal that we have accumulated over the years in order to dump them into a scrap metal dumpster provided by 2 Brothers scrap of Farmingdale. We have dealt with them in the past and they take the dumpster back, empty and weigh it then send us a check for the scrap. They are very reputable and that’s why we use them.

As we were moving metal, John showed up and we put him to work painting the remaining turntable handrail.

With the impending rainstorm approaching, I told him that we would be closing shop around 3pm and he takes the LIRR in & out, so he didn’t quite finish up before leaving to catch a 2:20 train home and Rich added the last drops of paint in plenty of time before the storm hit. It was flat black enamel and dried quickly. Just an FYI- the handrails and arch were a natural metal color, but were rusting, so I made an executive decision to paint them for greater longevity and to give a balance of colors to the entire turntable. The arch will be painted silver to stand out.
The only thing left was to seal up the 2 roof vents on the M1 simulator. When this unit was in use at the LIRR for training purposes, it was indoors and had air conditioning pumped into one vent and used the other one for exhausting the air out.
Since the unit is now outdoors, we had to remove the vents (4 screws each) and pop rivet aluminum plates over them and re-install them.
While I was on the roof waiting to get the vents back, I took a few shots over the yard and here they are.

Next week we will add the electrical conduits under the ties leading to the turntables control stand and motor then send the wiring through. Also we plan on adding the remaining molding around caboose #12’s windows and doors. I would also like to add a steel plate on the floor of the crossing shanty where the new pot bellied stove will sit as well as give it a final paint coat.
If time and hands permit, I also plan on getting the final coat of paint onto the World’s Fair cab.

In the last post, I wrote about last Mondays book reading by Heather Worthington, author of the children’s book “Miles of Smiles” the story of Roxey the LIRR dog and I had just uploaded some more shots from her last book signing at OBRM, so here are a few more shots of MY ROXEY.
Since I write this BLOG, I think I have a right to show her off.