Caboose Work Party 12

It was little chilly on Wednesday morning and the wind picked up during the day, but the sun was out so it wasn’t too bad. We had John, Jay, James, Gene and me on the crew. The wind had blown off the green tarp when I got there in the morning, but the other ones stayed on and not much water got in. Gene worked on getting more of the metal work like handrails and brackets off the outside of the caboose. 

John and James removed the rotten timbers from under the west bay window. In the foreground is what’s left of the timbers. They are working on a frame structure to replace them. Unfortunately, the main timber was rotten on the inside where it wasn’t visible. We are going to have to replace the outside west timber all the way from the south end to the middle of the bay window. They salvaged the big bolts to reuse to mount the new structure.

The bathroom wall was removed. Jay and Rob worked on removing the rotten floor and subfloor where the bathroom and shower were, and all the way under where the ice box was. Jay took 1-1/2” off the top of the second beam to patch in a new piece on the top. Some wood preservative will be put on first. The floor was trimmed back to the center of the third timber so was can replace the subfloor with 3/4” exterior plywood. 

Last week when we removed the outside beam, we screwed a board to the wall and used two farm jacks to hold up the wall and roof. This week, the rotten bottoms of the frame members were cut off and a 3 by 5 beam was used to support them. It is a little overkill, but it was on hand and the right size. The south end was lifted up 2 or 3 inches and blocking placed to hold up the beam. The the jacks were carefully lowered and removed.