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