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Twin Forks Chapter NRHS
Preserving Railroad History Since 1996.
The Restoration of C-63 & C-64
It may not seem like much, but this is what got us started. One day, one of our volunteers said "Lets pump air into C-63 and see what happens" and that is just what we did. We expected there to be holes in the lines but oddly enough there weren't any. We decided to press our luck and pump the air into C-64s lines as well. We were in awe as both cabooses held up to 100 lbs of air and no holes! We released the brakes and reapplied them and they were flawless! That proved to us that these two cabooses were in excellent condition!
That summer (2019), painting began. We decided on MTA Blue and yellow to display what these cabooses looked like in their later years.
After the exterior painting was done on both cabooses, we worked on getting the water to work in the cabooses. When we first turned on the water, we were very excited as one could imagine. This video is of the first drops of water coming out of the faucet, and as the water tank was being filled.
Once the Interior plumbing was done, we turned our attention to the lighting. We temporarily secured Christmas lights to the grab irons. This is the interior of C-63. The caboose is lit up! But this setup didn't last all that long, in a few weekends we would have completed the cars own lighting.
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Who doesn't like night shots? After the lighting was complete in both cars, we decided to do in "impromptu" night photography session with the two cabooses.
Then the painting of the interiors began. The inside of 63 had flaking paint, while 64 still had its later tan color and was covered in Graffiti.
Before
After
What's the point of having windows if you cant see out of them? We found a bunch of old M1 emergency windows that were stored inside the B&M car. We figured out that those windows, if cut down to size, were the exact thickness of the windows on the cabooses. Even tough we didn't have enough windows to replace them all, we did one entire bay on both cabooses. This improved natural lighting coming into the cabooses, as well as being able to see outside.
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With the North Bay finally done in 63, you can finally look outside!
The day finally came to put the lettering on C-63 and C-64. A few volunteers went out and got it done!
The above Two Photos show both sides of the cabooses after the lettering was applied. We decided to apply the "We serve with Pride" logo on C-64 because we thought it really fit with the Yellow and Blue. The saying around Twin Forks is that we "Preserve with Pride."
After Lettering and Numbering was applied, we can finally say that both our former Long Island cabooses finally have their respective identities back. There is still work to be done to these two beauties, but they are the crown jewels of Twin Forks! We are very proud of our volunteers for making this happen and we cannot wait to see more work that they complete!