On Saturday, September 24, Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin, Tyler Seeley, and Paul Brown gathered at the Museum to do a bit of track work, and switch some of our equipment to get things ready for the fall events. First, we did some work to measure, locate and prepare a couple of long ties to go under our switch. We then had to verify where the tie crossed under the rail so we can notch out the wood to accept plates that go under the switch points, as well as under standard rail on the adjacent track. This is not a standard set up for track, but we have some strange things at the Museum! We then went back to the shop yard to use the chainsaw and adz to make the notches. We were not able to finish that work before we needed to fire up one of the locomotives for the afternoon work, so we will continue next week.

After a lunch break, the crew switched our cabooses over to another track and set them up with Engine 104, which we will be using through this fall. Engine 103 and the AT&SF waycar were set out of the way on the lead that holds the Patriot, which is stored indoors. We also cranked up Engine 104 to make sure the systems where all working, and that the batteries got a recharge. After checking things out on 104, we cleaned up our tools and finished our day of work.

I have included a few pictures of today’s work so you can see where the equipment moved.

– Paul

On Saturday, September 17, we had one of our smallest turn outs for a work crew, and I would dare say that given the average age of today’s volunteers, we had the oldest track gang working in the country today. Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin and Paul Brown were the crew today. Now we only worked on the track in the morning, and we removed two long switch ties from under the track. Take a close look at the photos and tell me what you think of the condition of these ties!! They were pretty much disintegrated! When we completed that task, we broke for lunch.

After lunch, we worked on the tool truck and did some clean up work in the shop yard area. I have only included pictures of the track work.

– Paul

On Saturday, September 10, volunteers Colin Mellin, Dwight Maxey, John McDowell, Reid Adams, and Paul Brown enjoyed a respite from the heat wave, with some cloudy, cool weather, and stayed busy switching around many cars in our shop yard. After opening up a dead end spur track – that used to be unsecured because it was outside our fence – it was time to stuff it full with some equipment that doesn’t get regularly used and ends up being in the way. We spotted one old passenger car, the 44 tonner, and three odd freight cars on the spur, which opened some space for other projects. We were also able to bring the car we use for our Halloween event into the yard, so work could be done to improve it.

The work was done slowly, due to the equipment not being regularly used, and the track condition. It made for a long day, but we worked safely and had no incidents that caused delay or damage. Many thanks to the volunteer crew for their work! I have included a few pictures to illustrate the work done. Watch for some more exciting projects coming soon!

– Paul

On Saturday, September 3, our volunteers did a bunch of dirty work to get an old storage track ready to use. Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin, Reid Adams, John McDowell, Pascal Bartilow, Justin Cesar and Paul Brown started the day by moving a couple of heavy items. First we moved a locomotive idler axle from the storage track to one of our shop lead tracks. The second item was a complete plain bearing freight truck assembly. For those less familiar, a “truck” in this case is a set of wheels that go under a train car. The freight truck was heavy enough that it required both of our lifts to move! The crew thought up a way to successfully get the move done. The freight truck is now on display in front of our D Street Shop building. I have included a few pictures of these moves taken by Reid and Dwight.

In the afternoon after lunch, Pascal, Colin and Justin did some work to our US Army crane to be able to install the batteries. The crew did work to clean out the battery box and get the battery cables ready for use. They were not able to put the batteries in place so that will come in the future. Reid and Paul worked to clean up weeds and prepare the old storage track for use as we will be moving some of our rail equipment to that track next week.

As mentioned above, next week we will be moving a number of pieces of our rail equipment around to different tracks and stuffing the old storage track that we opened up this week. As part of these moves we will be placing our Halloween car close to the shop so prep work can be completed in time for our event. If you have ever wanted to solve a switching puzzle, come out next week and do it with real rail equipment!!

– Paul

Photos by Reid Adams and Dwight Maxey