Deb, Bill, Jay and Russ on the “front porch” of the U33C

One of our winter projects is the expansion of our mini-Museum to expand the displays and available experiences for the museum visitor.  A first step was the movement of the U33C simulator towards the front of Stall 16 thereby expanding the space between it and the Nova Scotia passenger car.

Bill Kaufman developed the simulator which we acquired five years ago and built our additional control stands. Bill lives in Alabama. Bill and his wife, Deb, were visiting Toronto this weekend On Saturday of this weekend, Jay and myself took the opportunity to have Bill assess the simulator and address a few issues with it.  This resulted in his recommendation that we mount a project to upgrade the software in the analogue to digital computer system to a more recent release.  We will incorporate this task into a larger program to update a number of areas in the simulator this winter.

On Sunday, a crew of volunteers moved the simulator.  Fortunately, this only involved jacking it up a bit and rolling it on its built-in railway wheels to the new location.  They then covered the pit behind it to prepare a floor for the new museum space.

Elsewhere, volunteers were hard at work continuing maintenance on the Sweet Creek live steam locomotive in the mini-depot.  Below, we see Mike using our “new” lathe as an inspection tool to check one of the driving axles.

Click on each image for a closer look!

Before the move

“Engineer” Bill

Newly freed space after the move

Newly freed space after the move

Mike checks an axle