Week 39
The fence separating the station and the Straphanger Saloon has been uprooted and the side/back areas are now paved. A car or truck will be able to fit between the bar and the station's vehicle barriers.
The fence had been the line of demarcation behind which I was able to shoot, so they let me come inside its former perimeter yesterday -- even though they were still paving there.
The friendly foreman I met a couple of weeks ago came up to me and said, "Hey, history guy - wanna see the inside?"
"Sure"
And that's how I got the interior shots shown below. For a change, I didn't even have to ask.
A good part of the side facing the tracks will be permanently open (right side of fifth pic), but there will be some heat provided by the unit on the beam over the opening. If snow or rain are blowing in from the east, it'll come right inside.
The sixth pic faces Anderson St and the last one shows the ceiling and the small heating unit on the beam in the lower right. The floor still has to be resurfaced.
I didn't take too many pictures because there were few places to put the camera on or against to steady it for the long exposures I needed, but there wasn't much variety to capture anyway and men were still working inside as I shot.
The bus shelter will be removed and the ticket machine will be placed inside. The work won't be finished by Christmas - as the foreman had guesstimated previously - because of a problem with wires or cables that ran under something they weren't supposed to, so it took time to deal with that problem.
The exterior color is the final color, so there will be no yellow railroad station.
I thought that would have been an appropriate nod to the past.