What's new at the museum, you ask?

Our hose cart is done.

The fire hose cart. It came from the Ford company town of Alberta. We've got about 40 feet of hose on the cart; I'd like to have more.

Regular readers (all two of you) may recall that last summer I vowed that the fire hose cart would be repaired and repainted before it went back into the storage building for the winter.

The cart was designed to be pulled by the firemen but at some point was modified so it could be towed by vehicle.

I lied. I did get some Bondo (aka wood putty) on to it and one wheel looking moderately less sad, but that was as far as I got. Then this spring we placed an ad a Facebook page, Baraga County Stuff for Sale (No Clothes), seeking a handyman willing to finish staining the new siding on the museum. A fellow answered the ad who said he'd worked for a local company that does painting but had had to stop working for awhile when his mother became ill. He seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to paint, so we contracted with him. We settled on a lump sum for the job, and he went to work.

Even before it was done, we were thinking, wow, this guy really does know what he's doing. Among other things, he was the neatest painter I'd ever seen. There were no splatters on the ground, no paint on his clothes. It was amazing. So I asked him to look over the fire hose cart and see if he felt comfortable rehabbing it. He looked it over. He said yes. Because it was obviously a lot harder to estimate how long it would take to do the hose cart, we opted for a contract that's based on hours worked and not a lump sum.

Our Railway Express cart. It came from the L'Anse depot and was in really sad shape before Dave started working on it.

The hose cart is now done. It looks great. He's moved on to rehabbing our Railway Express freight cart. I have no doubt it's going to look great, too. I have to confess I find myself casting about trying to figure out other painting/rehabbing projects for Dave to tackle, but unfortunately can't think of any. Which is probably good for the museum's budget, but, still. . . when he's being doing such a great job, I hate to see him leave.

The freight cart is going to stay on jack stands after it's done so there's no weight on the wheels. We should put the hose cart on a stand, too, but it's trickier because the axle is lot higher.