On Saturday, September 28, volunteers Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin, Bruce Davis, Chris Pollard, Dannis Hudson and Paul Brown spent the morning working to install an entire set of new cranking batteries in Engine 104. After a quick removal of the old batteries, the crew worked to bolt on connecting cables and set the eight new batteries into the locomotive. Dannis did some work cleaning the cab of Engine 104. Meanwhile, Dwight worked on connecting rails to the streetcar stall.

After a quick lunch break, it was time to start Engine 104 to make sure there were no issues. It sure was nice cranking an engine with new batteries and not having to spend time setting up jumper cables! We left the engine to run for a couple of hours to give the batteries a good charge and let fluids circulate in the engine. We did some other work to fix a loose seat in the cab of the engine, and work on adjusting a few things to get ready for the remainder of this years events.

Before ending work for the day, we reconnected some rails in our middle shop stall and completed the connection work on the streetcar stall rails. Overall, a great day at the Museum. I have included a few pictures of the work completed.

– Paul