South Shore 73 update

Many thanks to Bob Harris, who has forwarded a series of photos detailing recent progress on the roof of Chicago Lake Shore & South Bend 73. This is the last surviving South Shore Line wood car and it is the subject of a tremendous restoration project from chicken-coop condition. Recently the focus has been on the roof of the car, which was sheathed - unusually for an electric car - in copper. Well-known wood car restoration expert Glenn Guerra has been heading up this work.

The first five photos from a week or two ago detail various stages of installation of the copper sheets on the front end of the car's roof:

And the last two photos, taken more recently, show the front end of the car's roof following completion of the copper sheeting installation with all of the joints sealed up. Very impressive work!

Car 73 is a big car and there's a lot of work left to do, but the compound curves on the ends of the roof are obviously the most intricate and complicated parts of the roof work. This is a fairly unique accomplishment; I can't think of any other cars in traction preservation that have had this kind of copper sheathing totally replicated from scratch.