We have begun the restoration on Colorado Midland Observation car 111 at the Colorado Railroad Museum. After removing what was left of the belt rail we found that the wood behind it had chisel marks roughly an inch tall, and spaced the same distance as the grooves in the siding. In some places the chiseling was inline with the siding grooves while in other areas it was off but as you moved down the car would come back inline. See photos.

This is present on both sides of the car and the entire length. This would be allot of work to do so it must have a purpose. I have never seen this nor have any of our volunteers(many of whom have worked on other projects at other organizations.). I have a WAG theory but I am probably wrong.
So has anyone else seen this done?

The other mystery is that the outside window sill is 2 pieces. See photo.
The outer edge is half round nailed to the main board. This I have also never seen, I am used to this sill being 1 piece. 2 pieces would seem to invite more opportunity for water intrusion. I was planning to make a new 1 piece sill but wanted to research this and ask others here what they think. So has anyone seen this practice before?

Any wider view of the car side? Is the grooved siding below that original?

My hypothesis: The car has been re-sided with boards that are slightly narrower than the original. Hence the gaps in the siding slowly get out of sync down the car and come back in sync towards the other end. With the notch under the belt rail, the rail would act as sort of a drip edge over the seams at the top of the boards. That area, seems to me, would be prone to rot by wicking water up to the end grain without a notch.

No clue on the windows unless they were replaced, also.

I don't believe the siding is "original" to the car, I'm sure it was resided at some point in its life. It is old growth tight grain poplar. It has not been resided while at the museum.

The idea that the chiseling may have been for water drainage was my thought, but that is a shot in the dark on my part.

The Window sill is the wood that the windows sits on when closed. Looking at the zoomed in photo you can see the half round hanging off with the nail in it. In my experience these are once piece construction not two. This seems odd, and I was curious if anyone else has seen this.

My guess is the replaced one piece sill may not have completely covered the belt rail and the grooves were made to provide the impression that the siding went completely up behind the drip edge. Cars were resided frequently - 10 years was a good life span - in service back in the day. I have not only seen but used the 2 piece sill technique when the cost of remilling the last in service era one piece design was prohibitive for what resources we had - making a composite from things you can buy in stock requiring no custom milling made things happen that would have been otherwise impossible. Do not assume that all boards milled for car siding were exactly the same width either....... I've seen variations of up to .375 on the same side of the car.

Not knowing how the car was originally built, I’d say the sills are an expedient and less expensive replacement with the outer piece retaining the look of the original. Two piece sills would invite rot in my book as there is no way to really waterproof that joint in the long term.

If the sills stick out over the belt rail and there is room, put a small kerf just inside the bottom of the outer edge of the new sill to work as a drip edge. You could do the same with a small bead of caulk but that doesn’t last as long.

Jeff,

On window sills i ran into a similar situation of sorts. when replacing them on my caboose i found the design was beyond the ability to manufacture with simple wood working tools (table saw, routers etc.). i made them two piece to simplify the manufacture of the sills and used biscuits and gorilla glue to do final assembly.

last i knew they were still holding up well for the most part.

AL P.

Who built the car?

The car was built by Pullman as a first class coach in 1887. It was modified into an observation car in 1905, and a closed vestibule added to the head end in 1913

Thanks for the comments and ideas. You are all coming up with the same suggestions I have been getting from others.