Weekend Report: Sunday brings success at last!
Click on each image for a closer look!
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We had a full and eventful Sunday culminating in success! Everything we had planned for the weekend is now complete. After the steam locomotive drivers’ class this morning, we got right back into it at 12:30 and finally completed the equipment shuffle planned for Saturday. We were able to complete the installation of the remaining four bearing bearings on the flat car and then moved everything as follows:
- The boxcar and flat are now in stall 17,
- #4803 is on track 34 (inside the fence)
- The Jackman is on the turntable.
The fight to get the last four bearings into place on the flat car was no easier today than the first four were yesterday. To get clearance to insert the brasses, the truck side frames had to be both jacked up and pulled sideways. This took a chain hoist and some rigging. It also took the use of the oxygen-propane cutting torch to warm up the axleboxes to partly defrost the solidly-frozen journal-packs. Once we had all eight brasses in place the car rolled nicely. Even though we still need to fit the proper wedges the car is mobile and safely usable for the slow speeds we use at TRHC.
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Our portable diesel simulator control stands had originally been packed for shipping in wooden crates with small plastic wheeled casters to facilitate loading and unloading them on their trip last year from the developer. However when we tried to use the crates for moving the simulator to the Christmas train Show, the casters were not up to the job. So two of us spent Sunday rebuilding one of the crates with a much more robust floor and with much larger rubber casters. Next weekend we will be taking this simulator to the Copetown Train Show and use it to promote the TRHA and the museum.
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Posting by Michael Guy & Russ Milland; Pictures by Stephen Gardiner & Russ Milland
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