Oh boy, a new toy to work on. The Gulf Coast Chapter NRHS in Houston has acquired from Amtrak the ex SP diner #10212 for the new museum we are working on in Tomball, Texas. Same number I chose for my N scale model that I built for my Sunset Limited. In service in San Antonio, Texas. Don Munger photo. In Amtrak service. Geno Dailey photo.
Has been changed pretty much. The aisle side has been altered a bit as you can see in the Amtrak photo. I don't have a photo of the Amtrak kitchen side to compare.
Quite different. Windows changed and that door. Will probably need to stay that way? Or is there thought of restoring original appearance?
We plan to repaint it to the Sunset Limited livery. However the interior will probably stay Amtrak unless some contributor earmarks a large donation to restore it to the one designed by artist/naturalist John James Audubon.
Some more shots of the car from when it first came to Amtrak. No HEP yet and a different number. No modifications at this point.
Now that the pandemic problems have faded, we have been back at work on the diner. The latest project is replacing the two 12” diameter return air ducts that run over the passageway from the return filter grille by the A end door to the mid-car air handler. When the car was rebuilt Amtrak had used domestic grade fiberglass insulated flexible duct. It had completely disintegrated by the time the time we got the car. A more durable solution was required. Lightweight spiral-wound rigid duct was suggested, but it comes in ten foot lengths and we weren't sure if it could be inserted into the ceiling plenum through the limited space of the large ceiling access panel. We wanted to do as little cutting as possible. The solution was to buy a single piece and see if it would fit. We had located a supplier on the north side of Austin, so we drove there and bought one length. To our very great relief we able to get it into the car, walk it down the kitchen, into the dining room and then up through the large access panel and into the ceiling plenum. It barely made it – any longer or larger in diameter and it would not have fit. It slipped snugly over the spigot in the bulkhead. Now we can go ahead and purchase the remaining pieces and hook them all up. You can see where we had previously installed rock wool insulation and covered it with wire mesh to hold in in place. Then we had to do some maintenance on our other car that is being leased by the Austin Steam Train folks, the EX MKT NEW BRAUNFELS. One of the window seals had developed a leak and rain water was infiltrating to between the two glass pains. Once apart, it was apparent that the inner, laminated pane, had deposits on the inner surface. The tempered class exterior pain did not. I had some fine 0000 steel wool and amazingly it cleaned up. There is still a small area where the glass surface is etched, but it is 90% better than before. We put the sash back together with the inner pane reversed, so the etched areas are now on the outside of the sash, accessible from inside the car. We can now get some glass polishing compound and work on it further from inside the car without disassembling it again. We had planned on replacing the rubber weather-stripping, but both pieces looked to be still quite pliable and in good shape, so we re-used them. It will need observation to see if the seal holds. Don't have an after photo to show.