Frank writes...
I was out at IRM again on Sunday, and this time got to spend the entire time working on the 205. During the week I picked up a gallon of newly-mixed Indiana Railroad Green from Diamond Paints, which allowed me to put a first coat of green on the anticlimber at the west end of the car (below).Note that this series of car has a highly unusual "stacked" double anticlimber and that the upper one was painted orange while the lower one was green. Bob Bruneau had looked at the car structure and concluded that the upper anticlimber was basically just cosmetic: no extra framing exists to support it, and in a collision with a high-floor car it likely wouldn't help any more than a normal steel plate in the same location. But we're anticipating that this particular theory will remain untested. I also painted the step on the car, as seen below.Now we're not 100% certain what color the steps on this car were painted in service. Very few cars that were painted by IRR had fold-out steps - none of the high-speeds or heavy interurbans did - and I haven't been able to locate any decent high-contrast photos of the 200-series cars in service. For the time being the steps will be green, but if evidence comes along to the contrary we can easily repaint them orange.As shown above, I also did some clean-up work on the interior. This mainly consisted of installing the headliner planks over the windows on the south (right) side, which I had put off so that I could easily remove the side windows when painting the car. I also installed the window track ratchets that had been removed to enable us to remove the car's windows (this was done back a few years when Jim Heinlein went through and stripped the Portland paint off of all the side windows) as well as the standee grab-irons screwed to the ceiling next to the bulkheads.
