Hot fun in the Summertime

And let me tell you, it was HOT today. That's not the reason we only had a few hands available. It was a big volunteer firefighters day on L.I.
Many of our volunteers are volunteer firemen and they were busy with their respective departments.
That didn't stop us though!
Doug, Rich and I started the day at 8am. Our plan was to work on the drive axles.
Our Steam Locomotive Contractor, Steam Operations Corp., gave me a new list of "chores" to be accomplished so that they would be able to save (their) time & (our) money when the parts arrive in Birmingham Alabama.
We were to have scraped the axle centers clean of any dirt/grease/road grime, then wash the axles with kerosene to clean off any remainin dirt or grease. We then had to prime the axles so they would not rust up.
While this was going on, a new volunteer, Peter, whom I know as a fellow LI Sunrise Trail NRHS chapter member arrived around 10am.
His mom dropped him off and after my safety drill, we began to polish the drive rods that we started 2 weeks ago.Working for a couple of hours, we finished the first one and after a brief lunch, I gave him a tour of the equipment on site.
We then returned to work and finished up the 2nd drive rod when his parents came to pick him up.
Rich, Doug & I went over the rods one more time and fixed any spots that weren't polished. We then coated both rods with COSMOLINE, let them dry a bit in the sun, then put a tarp over them until we could load them into the parts trailer.
We will not be having a work session on Saturday July 3rd, so everyone can enjoy the holiday weekend with their families.
When we return on July 10th, we will start working on the last set of locomotive drive rods and we will be stamping the locomotive frame with reference numbers as indicated in our "list" of things to do.
We also hope to have an air compressor on site again so we can finish needle scaling the turntable motor frame and get a nice thick coat of EXTEND, a rust converter, onto it.
After that, 2 coats of primer and finally! 2 coats of paint, then installation.
Here is a photo of the drive rods I took when we first emptied them out from the trailer. You can see we are wearing coats, so it was NOT from todays work session!!


Big doings and BIG plans.
Come on down!!
Gary

My biggest Fan!

A day later than I expected- Yesterday, 6/19/10 Leon, Wayne, Paul and I went to BOONTON N.J., the home of many former LIRR Ping Pong coaches and a few other cars.
From what I gathered yesterday and through the years, These cars were brought down some 30 + years ago and were soon turned into a small shopping mall. A few of these cars had their vestibules welded together to form a weathertite entrance from 1 car to another.  One was an ice cream parlor while 2 were a fashion shop for the ladies. I received an email a couple of weeks ago from John Zanone who is in charge of scrapping these cars. The ownership through the years has been convoluted but the last owner that we know of was Eric Strohmeyer who graciously allowed us to salvage the brake stand in the former brake test car.
We met up with John around 9am having left Oyster Bay at 7:20 for the 1+1/2 hour drive down. When we arrived, theere was a group from the NJ United Railway Historical Society salvaging wood and fixtures from a former CNJ Blue Comet observation car across the tracks.
We started right in removing the parts that we came down for.
A badly needed toilet (ok, bring on the crappy jokes) for our lavatory, a cup dispenser and trash chute, a porcelain cistern drain, a spare bathroom door window (stained glass for your pleasure), 3 luggage racks for spare parts, 1 sign holder for a friend, 25-40 lamp globes and fixtures for us-horsetrading-a friend, and FINALLY.......5  VERY HEAVY ceiling fans. It must have taken less time to remove all of the other parts than it did to remove these 5 fans.
We first had to figure out how to get to the 4 mounting bolts which took me almost an hour. Then we had the knock off years and layers of thick paint to get the collars knocked down to get to these 4 rusty nuts.
We then took about 40 minutes to remove 1 fan. The other 4 took us about 1/2 hour each, so that dragged our day until about 2pm. A quick 1/2 hour lunch and we were back on the road for our (supposed) 1+1/2 hour treck back to unload in Oyster Bay.
Paul & I made it back to Oyster Bay at 5pm while Leon &Wayne returned at 5:30. We unloaded and then went our own ways home.
A very long day for me-I was up at 5am, and a very dirty but satisfying day for all.
The only regrets we had were that there was NO WAY we could have salvaged the "owl eye" windows on the end walls as they were riveted with 1 inch rivets and we would have needed the plasma cutter and we had to pass up on 2 walkover seat frames as we ran out of room in our 2 vehicles!
I am posting a few shots that I took yesterday
Check out PHOTOBUCKET and look up my albums at THEWINEGUY35.
Gary

What a day-almost perfect!

I am beat!
Normally I don't get much sleep anyway and I am up before the 6:30 alarm, however last night I did get a few hours but was still up before the 5:45 alarm. Oh well, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Got to Oyster Bay this morning at 7am to help set up for the "Do Tank".
We actually set up a lawn, made out of sod, right next to our train station/museum headquarters. A water feature was also setup nearby with a sand box for the kids to play in and all the way down Audrey ave to the gazebo we set up fake bushes, some topiari (I just love that word) and plenty of tables and chairs for the town folk to relax in and "set a spell" while visiting our little part of the world.
At 101 Audrey at 1pm a town discussion was taking place to try and get ideas into how the town could re-vitalize itself. I listened to some very good ideas but since I do not live there, I really didn't feel it was my place to open my mouth. Something that I very rarely do.
As for our work session, we finished up the 2 drive rods from last week, then started 2 more. We finished needle scaling the pilot truck and applied a coat of primer.
Because of the extra hands on deck today we started needle scaling the turntable motor frame assembly. After the next work session, we should have this assembly totally devoid of paint and will apply a thick coat of Extend rust treatment. This stuff converts rust to another type of coating that resists water so cannot let the metal turn rusty again. Then we will apply 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of gray to match the turntable bridge and re-install theis to the bridge in the tt pit. Hopefully, by the time we finish, the bridge ties will have been delivered on site.
Then we have to start building the bridge deck and getting it installed-another installment to come!

Gary

I got to meet a friend today----

The day started off overcast and fairly cool. Arrived around 8am and Doug Kasner was already at the display yard having a spot of tea, as is his norm. Around 8:30 Leon Daitz arrived and announced that I, me, had a visitor.
It turned out that my visitor and I have been online friends for a couple of years. Richard Glueck from Maine-formerly of Long Island, was up in Westchester visiting some people and decided to stop on by for a visit. Boy, was I glad to finally meet him in person. He and I walked the entire yard, going over the equipment and I brought him & his wife over to the preview center to see how we have  grown.
A brief walk down the street to the historic train station to show it off as well and we returned to the yard.
All the while I was showing off the museum, Doug, Leon , Steve Rothaug, "little" John Grocki and Michael Okunewitch, were hard at work needle scaling the pilot truck frame and polishing a pair of side rods as per the directives from our locomotive contractor.
For those of you who don't know what needle scaling is, imagine a screw gun in shape, with about 2 dozen fingers sticking out of the end of the barrel. Press the trigger and those fingers all move in an out and in pattern which blasts the paint, rust and scale off of the metal.
I imagine that we will go through 2 sets of fingers during the paint removal on the pilot and tender truck frames. I also think we will go through 4 sets of fingers on the locomotive frame. I believe that we will use up 3 guns in total. Not the fingers, but the actual guns themselves
Next week, we finish what was started today and we will begin the paint and rust removal on the turntable motor frame assembly.
Gary