Today we finished phase 1 of the restoration of former LIRR steam locomotive #35.
Attending to the blueprints and measuring tools, were Scott Lindsay and his men from Steam Operations Corp of Birmingham Alabama. These men measured all of the pieces from the driving gear and frame of #35, its pilot truck and the runnning gear from the tender as well. Our volunteers were at the yard assiting them from Wednesday to today.
Rich Brody and Leon Daitz headed up the OBRM staff on hand and were assisted by Doug Kasner during a day and Me today.
They also went over the tender shell to see where the metal was too thin and needed replacement.
Before they left to go home down south, I went over the next set of tasks that were needed before the parts went to their shop for the actual machining. This next phase should take us about 2 months starting after the Memorial day weekend. I told the volunteers to stay home and spend the work day with their families so we can all be refreshed for this phase.
We will also be assigning some of new crew members as heading up parts of the phase to break them in.
This will be BIG!!
Gary
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Turn, Turn, Turn
Well,
we took another turn for the good as we went back to working on our turntable.
We had 5 volunteers on board during a HOT and sunny day yesterday. I figured it will take a few more weeks of this weather to get our blood thinned out for the season.
If you remember from the last turntable posting, the bridge had a bad bind as we turned it around, so we needed to back off the bridge and remove a couple of ring rails in order to fix the problem.
We wound up un-spiking and removing 3 ring rails. After shaving down about 2 dozen ties, we broke for lunch, then returned to re-spike 2 of the 3 ring rails back into place.
I'm sure that we could have done all 3, but we were fortunate enough to have had a site visit by some of the board members of our local National Railway Historical Society chapter, the L.I. Sunrise Trail chapter.
The president, Steve Quigley came home from Concord California (nice place-BTW) on the red-eye in order to make the visit, and we were very excited to see them. They presented us with a check for a large sum to help us start the steel work on our Ping Pong coach #7433. It needs some metal work where the roof sheet meets the side sheets.
I sent a diagram out to a RR Tie Manufacturer to get a quote on our needs for the turntable bridge and I hope to have that answer in a couple of weeks to present to the board of OBRM.
We do have a grant to buy and install the ties and if you remember, we have already brought back on site, the motor and electrical resistance bank as well as the split ring electrical collector for the top of the arch. We still need to get back the original control stand and finish the motor frame assembly.
Then it will be a heavy rebuild of the turntable. The town of Oyster Bay will need to get LIPA in in order to erect a new power pole west of the turntable and exactly 180 degress from the east pole that exists on site and to also give us a meter with 4 115 volt drops once the arch is in place. This will provide us with 460 volts to the motor.
Next week we will have on site, our locomotive rebuild contractyor Scott Lindsey from Steam Operations Corp. to start the running gear re-build of our favorite G5s LIRR steam locomotive #35 (but #1 in our hearts!)
Gary
we took another turn for the good as we went back to working on our turntable.
We had 5 volunteers on board during a HOT and sunny day yesterday. I figured it will take a few more weeks of this weather to get our blood thinned out for the season.
If you remember from the last turntable posting, the bridge had a bad bind as we turned it around, so we needed to back off the bridge and remove a couple of ring rails in order to fix the problem.
We wound up un-spiking and removing 3 ring rails. After shaving down about 2 dozen ties, we broke for lunch, then returned to re-spike 2 of the 3 ring rails back into place.
I'm sure that we could have done all 3, but we were fortunate enough to have had a site visit by some of the board members of our local National Railway Historical Society chapter, the L.I. Sunrise Trail chapter.
The president, Steve Quigley came home from Concord California (nice place-BTW) on the red-eye in order to make the visit, and we were very excited to see them. They presented us with a check for a large sum to help us start the steel work on our Ping Pong coach #7433. It needs some metal work where the roof sheet meets the side sheets.
I sent a diagram out to a RR Tie Manufacturer to get a quote on our needs for the turntable bridge and I hope to have that answer in a couple of weeks to present to the board of OBRM.
We do have a grant to buy and install the ties and if you remember, we have already brought back on site, the motor and electrical resistance bank as well as the split ring electrical collector for the top of the arch. We still need to get back the original control stand and finish the motor frame assembly.
Then it will be a heavy rebuild of the turntable. The town of Oyster Bay will need to get LIPA in in order to erect a new power pole west of the turntable and exactly 180 degress from the east pole that exists on site and to also give us a meter with 4 115 volt drops once the arch is in place. This will provide us with 460 volts to the motor.
Next week we will have on site, our locomotive rebuild contractyor Scott Lindsey from Steam Operations Corp. to start the running gear re-build of our favorite G5s LIRR steam locomotive #35 (but #1 in our hearts!)
Gary
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A day that will live in our hearts!
Today as I write this posting, I am dirty, tired and very sore. Man am I gonna feel like crapola tomorrow.
We started around 8am, like we wanted to, with only 4 people. The weather was perfect, warm with a slight breeze off the water and sunny!
We had 2 new volunteers show up a little while later and we all jumped into finishing our list. Clean/degrease and coat the locomotive driver bearing boxes-all six of them. Sound familiar like a broken record????
Well, we also cleaned/degreased the pilot truck bearing boxes but we did not have to apply the Cosmoline to them as they have bearings that are removeable.
During this time, we had 2 more volunteers show up, then a little while later another new volunteer showed up. We had the newbies doing the greasy work with a couple of our seasoned veterans and we started clenaing up the journal pedestal boxes (which hold the bearing boxes for the drivers) of paint and old grease.
When these were finished we cleaned up the crosshead guides and brassses and left the cylinders for after lunch.
We now had a lot of volunteers on site and I felt that they need a good lunch-Pizza it was!
After lunch, 2 more new volunteers showed up and we dove into the steam cylinders and valve gear cylinders to clean/degrease and coat them with a little oil. Our job on locomotive #35 has come to and end for now. Now its time for the experts to come in from May 16th-21st to complete their end.
I also took the time to finally hook up the headlight and re-check the elctrical boxes in our Worlds Fair Cab display. After a while everything tested out fine and next week during our 1st open house, we will be dedicating this unit to 3 of our volunteers who have passed on. This is extremely important to me personally as I worked alongside these men for quite some time and one of them being honored is my brother-in-law and my family will be there.
Sometime later this season while its just cooling off, I will apply the 2nd coat of grey paint on this cab unit as the final touch to a great restoration.
Starting from the 15th and going forward, we will be adding a few finishing touches to Caboose #12 and then we will be going hog wild on our Turntable project. I would love to finsh the work season by having our tuntable move under its own power (electric) before the weather turns nasty.
On hand today were Steve Rothaug (sorry about forgetting you last week), Rich Brody, Leon Daitz, Betty Carley, George Mutari, Doug Kasner, ME, Steve Torborg, Steve McKeon and our New guys, John, Louis, Ricky, Michael and Mason.
Gary
We started around 8am, like we wanted to, with only 4 people. The weather was perfect, warm with a slight breeze off the water and sunny!
We had 2 new volunteers show up a little while later and we all jumped into finishing our list. Clean/degrease and coat the locomotive driver bearing boxes-all six of them. Sound familiar like a broken record????
Well, we also cleaned/degreased the pilot truck bearing boxes but we did not have to apply the Cosmoline to them as they have bearings that are removeable.
During this time, we had 2 more volunteers show up, then a little while later another new volunteer showed up. We had the newbies doing the greasy work with a couple of our seasoned veterans and we started clenaing up the journal pedestal boxes (which hold the bearing boxes for the drivers) of paint and old grease.
When these were finished we cleaned up the crosshead guides and brassses and left the cylinders for after lunch.
We now had a lot of volunteers on site and I felt that they need a good lunch-Pizza it was!
After lunch, 2 more new volunteers showed up and we dove into the steam cylinders and valve gear cylinders to clean/degrease and coat them with a little oil. Our job on locomotive #35 has come to and end for now. Now its time for the experts to come in from May 16th-21st to complete their end.
I also took the time to finally hook up the headlight and re-check the elctrical boxes in our Worlds Fair Cab display. After a while everything tested out fine and next week during our 1st open house, we will be dedicating this unit to 3 of our volunteers who have passed on. This is extremely important to me personally as I worked alongside these men for quite some time and one of them being honored is my brother-in-law and my family will be there.
Sometime later this season while its just cooling off, I will apply the 2nd coat of grey paint on this cab unit as the final touch to a great restoration.
Starting from the 15th and going forward, we will be adding a few finishing touches to Caboose #12 and then we will be going hog wild on our Turntable project. I would love to finsh the work season by having our tuntable move under its own power (electric) before the weather turns nasty.
On hand today were Steve Rothaug (sorry about forgetting you last week), Rich Brody, Leon Daitz, Betty Carley, George Mutari, Doug Kasner, ME, Steve Torborg, Steve McKeon and our New guys, John, Louis, Ricky, Michael and Mason.
Gary
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