April 24, 2023 Restoration Update
A couple hours of work make a big difference! Our caboose spent over a decade with broken and vandalized windows, open to the elements, before we put up some temporary wood coverings shortly after purchasing the car in May of 2022. These coverings were installed on the interior of the car, and over the past year, it has become evident that these temporary coverings are not keeping the water and snow out of the interior.
Since it looks like new windows might be several months or even a year away, we spent about four hours today re-engineering these window coverings to be more permanent. They are now designed to sit inside the recessed frames from the outside, while being firmly secured to additional support inside the car. We also painted them black so they’d be sealed from the elements and also not look as egregious - compare it to the earlier exterior photos of the car. With the way the windowframes are designed, this should preclude any additional leaks from these windows. We still need to re-cover the windows on the four corners of the bay window and the windows on the end doors.
In the process of boarding over the bay windows, we removed the two bay window screens to make room for the boards. In the process, we took the opportunity to fix some damage to one of the bay window frames that was present when we first inspected the car in 2019. The first photo below was taken on April 23, 2019 - four years and a day ago - while the other two were taken at home this evening before an after straightening out this trim piece.
