The clock is ticking on getting the Union Terminal timepiece tick-tocking again. It was removed last year for cleaning and maintenance and is scheduled to be reinstalled beginning Monday.
The Verdin Company built the Art Deco clock specifically for the train station in the 1930s. A team from the company did the repair work and will do the reinstallation.
Museum Center Spokesman Cody Hefner says the clock mechanisms must be hand-carried up many flights of steps to a tiny clock room barely big enough for more than one person.
"There's just not a lot of space to either bring this entire mechanism that operates the clock through the face of the clock, which has all these glass panes, or up the stairwell between those two sets of glass windows in front of the rotunda," Hefner explains. "They're going to bring this up peice by piece and assemble it on site in that clock room."
Hefner says Verdin is allowing two days for the installation. There are lots of small parts that will have to be reassembled once in the clock room.
"The hands will have to be installed from the outside... and they'll be bringing those up in a lift. The hands are very heavy and they're also very fragile with the neon on them."
The restoration cost about $8,000, though Verdin says the work that went into it was probably worth more. The company doesn't have an original bill of sale but he estimates it cost $10-12,000 in the early 1930s.
