A rare day off from work

So?
Who really cares?
Well, MIke Bartley & I did-today:Friday October 3, 2014. OR, the day before Yom Kippur.
Tonight,  as I am writing this, began the most holy of days for my fellow Jewish  brethren.
So because I had the day off, I asked Mike if he wanted to get some hours in at the yard site. Since we received the email that tomorrows volunteer session was being cancelled due to an impending rain storm, I figured Friday, no docents, no visitors and no one bothering us or pulling us into different assignments.
We started at 9am and we went like gangbusters until 4pm.

Mike began by needle-scaling the engineers walkway on #398-Dashing Dottie-Yellow Dinky, while I was on the roof putting another yellow coat of paint on. He also needle-scaled the frame that surrounds the grill work on the front of the hood. When I was done, I touched up a few areas on the fireman's side of the cab in yellow and also painted the fireman's side of the hood yellow, as well as the grill & frame.

After Mike finished needle-scaling the walkway, we used an air gun to blow off all of the paint chips & dust and both of us then took to painting the  walkway and the previously needle-scaled and primed frame and and front buffer/coupler black.
WOW! did this look great.
After a short break, we decided to needle-scale the rear buffer/coupler and then paint the entire rear unit black.

Just because we still had the black paint out, we then painted the coupler cut bars from the rear of the unit. They will need to be turned over and finished.
Then we can paint the coupler cut bars from the front of the unit and re-install both sets and the clamps.

As an aside. Many of you know and or have read that I am a huge LIRR NY Worlds Fair collector.
So, after we finished and cleaned up,  we left. I proceeded to kill some time at Willis Hobbies where OBRM friend, Steve Ford took me to the back room to show me something.
He opened a box and told me that it came from the collection of the late John Scala, whom you know of from his highly acclaimed book-Diesels of the Sunrise Trail and his dynamite work on the LIST Calendars.
Johns son Michael and Steve are going through his collection and came upon four (4) LIRR worlds fair painted cars.
 He showed them to me and asked me if I knew about them.
One was a motorized unit and the 2nd car was not. The two others were just painted shells with wood blocks glued inside of them.
I looked at the non motorized unit and instantly recognized it as coming from the actual HO scale model of Long Island that was inside the largest tent at the LIRR Pavilion inside the 1964/65 NY Worlds Fair.
In fact, ALL of the cars came from the model  railroad. It turns out that last month, I purchased a negative of the model railroad and the Motorized unit is in the photo!
Steve then told me that he & Michael wanted to donate the units to OBRM.
Upon saying my goodbyes, Dave McConnell, who works at Willis and has loaned OBRM HIS model from the HO scale layout (which we thought was the only car left in existence), proceeded to tell me that he too, was donating his car to OBRM.
Holy CRAP! First, no cars existed, then 1 car existed and we had it on loan, now 5 cars exist AND OBRM was lucky to have them all donated.

Happy Yom Kippur-It has really started out as a good year for OBRM.

Many thanks to Michael Scala, Steve Ford and Dave McConnell for their priceless contributions.

Keep the faith!
Gary