[PRCo] The Weekend at PTM

[Fred Schneider]

Dennis already put a post on line about the painting of 4398.   Let  
me add to that that you should have been there to have witnessed  
Justin at work.  Because of the foul ingredients in the paint, he was  
working only at night when no one else would be in the shop.  Some  
one said there was cyanide in it in small doses ... I did not pick up  
a paint can and read it.  At any rate, Justin was in a sealed uniform  
that looked like a man from Mars, with an air pumped in from outside  
the building.  When he left Sunday the jacks were in position to  
raise the body to do the underside tonight.   The visible steel  
(inside and out) now has one coat of zinc chromate primer covered  
with a coat of a more conventional brown primer with an epoxy  
filler.   Not the stuff Pittsburgh Railways spent their money on.

And to Bob Detrick ... you guys added a great touch to the event.   
The room was always filled with people looking at the East Penn  
modules and I might add that Bob's ran with the least amount of  
problems.   But overall they reminded me of my sister and her husband  
packing up two grand pianos for a concert and expecting that you  
could play them without retuning.  It doesn't work that way.  And  
those HO modules needed to be retuned too after a trip from Philly to  
get the trolley wire all back in alignment.  And to clean the wire.   
And to clean the rails.  And to properly flatten or twist all the  
frogs and section insulators.  And then I sure that if the humidity  
or temperature changed over night, you start all over again.   Thanks  
to Bob and your friends for all you did.  It was a great event.

The trucks outside were fantastic.  This was the second time in one  
year when I've seen Mack chain-drive trucks.  The first was a hand- 
cranked beast with hard rubber tires at the circus museum in Baraboo,  
Wisconsin.  And now a much more modern version (1937)  brought into  
the trolley museum with pneumatic-tires, an electric-starter, a  
diesel and air-brakes but still the old open cab (cab? who are we  
kidding.) and the traditional Mack hood.  Sort of like, if it ain't  
broke, don't fix it.  Then some one must have told Mack management  
that it might be safer with doors on the cab.  Maybe that happened  
three years later when the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened and people  
were flying by at 90 mph.

Thanks for bringing the guys Bob.

OH, AND BOB, IF YOU WANT TO GO, WE ARE GOING FOR KOREAN TONIGHT ...  
LEAVING RICH'S HOME AT 6 PM FOR DINNER AT 69TH ST.

Fred Schneider