Another great day at the shop, quite hot, but thankfully there was a (strong) breeze keeping things sort of comfortable. John spent part of the day cutting the grass (which he only did a week ago, but it grows pretty quick). Last weekend was a big time for track with James & Nick, and this weekend was all about CN Flanger 56323.

We started off by moving TH&B gondola 2676 back over to track ED17, and figured while we were doing that, we’d do some training as well so some of our members could learn the safe way to work around the train in the yard. There is more training to be done, but it’s a good start, and we got to use the new track, which is just amazing to finally get to do.

However, while all that was going on, our sign painter, David Vance was working on CN 56323. This is something that we’ve been excited about since the painting of the body started last year. As a sign painter, David put a lot of time and effort into sizing and adjusting the lettering for the car, not to mention handmaking all the lettering patterns. We don’t have any proper drawings, so he had to work it all out just from pictures of various cars, and, every picture is pretty much different. To see the process of how it’s all set up and done is quite interesting. David has had to do many adjustments on the lettering, and after setting up some of it on the side, it was decided to resize some of the lettering as it looked a bit big. He was able to start with the Canadian National lettering, and it is looking great. We will get the north side and ends of the car painted next weekend so he will be able to continue there when he’s ready.

Patrick came out and went back to work on the Plymouth, working on freeing up some of the stuck injectors, to prepare it for a test start in the coming weeks. The Plymouth hasn’t been started since we had it running some 10yrs ago, but the time is getting close to fire it up again.

Thanks to everyone who came to help out today, Jim, Nolan, Mike, Neil, Patrick, Ken, John, Rick, David and Ken.