Chris The Welder came back to work on WP668, our backyard railroad
caboose, on Saturday. He finished attaching the five foot square steel
plate to the bay window. John helped and in the process learned a great
many welding techniques and tricks. Chris’ next projects are to make the
steel handrail and balusters for the wooden steps and the steel ladder for
each end of the caboose. John and I will be finishing up on the bay
window – polishing the metal, adding the filler between welds, and painting.
We also need to buy new wood-frame windows to fit into both bays.
(One window is missing and the other is in very poor condition.)
John spent yesterday working on the electrical. He is running the wires and
putting in outlets and switches on the inside. Also, he is adding two
porch lights at each end.
I am still painting yellow trim. I am also getting ready to paint the markings
back. I have found a company which will make the stencils. Looking at
some of the fonts I have available and comparing them to the historic
pictures I have of original Western Pacific lettering, HGMaruGothicMPRO
or Helvetica fonts seem closest. On one of the railroad email
discussions, I saw a reference to WP using Zephyr Gothic and
Cooper Black fonts but I don’t know what those look like.
Here is a 1974 photo of WP668. The yellow WP 668 on each bay and
the much smaller letters and numbers along the bottom steel edge both identify
the caboose and give service dates.
WP668, around 1974
Location/Date/Photographer unknown. S. Roger Kirkpatrick
collection, listed on
Central California Rails Caboose Index – W
Used with permission of S. Roger Kirkpatrick
Work in progress or planned before WP668 is usable:
- Finish installing electrical plugs and switches inside
- Installing lights outside
- Create, install stairway balusters and handrails
- Final stair, electrical inspections and sign off
- Fill and paint back bay window
- Buy and install wood windows into bays
- Install interior wood facing on bays around windows
- Installing the metal roof covering
- Painting the inside
- Fixing the base floor inside (1/3 of it is damaged, 2/3 of it is solid)
- Covering the floor inside (probably with linoleum)
- Repaint original exterior markings
WP668 is all swept out and tidied up so that our friends and relations
coming over for Thanksgiving can tour to see what progress we have
made.
KatysBlog 