Game? What game? On Sunday I was able to make it out to IRM for the first time this year due to a break in my work schedule and, sure enough, there was a group of hardy souls working in the shop notwithstanding the big event on TV. Norm Krentel and Jeff Brady were working on roof pieces for the Michigan Electric car, the indefatigable Tim Peters was working on windows for the 1024 and Jon Fenlaciki was making repairs to the swing-out rear window for Indiana Railroad 65. There was also a flurry of activity around the West Towns car, where Dan Fenlaciki (below) was working with Joel Ahrendt and Frank Sirinek on assembling the new brake rigging.
As for me, I got some more done on the 205. Years ago we had scrapped the body of an Indiana Service Corp lightweight interurban car from the 320-series that was identical to our Fort Wayne-Lima 91, and among the parts salvaged had been the letterboard from one side of the car with the old Indiana Railroad lettering still showing through. A while back I had determined that the lettering on these panels was the same size and spacing as what the 205 had in service, so on Sunday I dragged the two letterboard panels (one for "Indiana" and one for "Railroad") from their home between the gauge on Track 51 over to the shop for tracing.
Many thanks to Dan and Joel for helping drag these over; boy, they were heavy! They were also rusty, but fortunately there are plenty of repeated letters in "Indiana Railroad" so we were able to use duplicate letters to fill in gaps where the original paint was rusted off. Now all we need to do is transfer the tracings to mylar and cut that out for stencils, plus I also need to trace the 205's numbers off of the side of the car that wasn't needle-chipped. It's coming along!
