Good turnout for the Nov 2 work session. In attendance were Dakota Dumont, Tim Averill, Don Wildes, Bill Piche, Joe Monty, and Don Sanger.
Dakota, Tim, Bill, and Don S. got to work on the wood pile. A big thanks to Dakota and Tim for bringing a gas powered splitter. It made short work of a pile that probably would have taken all day to split down to size with hand tools. With the logs taken care of, attention switched to the last of the planking hiding out in the weeds by the boxcars on the hill behind the yard. Three bucket loads of planking were fetched, cut to length, and removed of the majority of screws.
Over at the engine house, Don W and Joe were busy doing a thorough cleaning of #4's boiler inside and out. Tubes were punched with an air tool, and a complete boiler wash was done. Joe also repaired a hole in the bottom of the smoke box and replaced the B&M 5 chime whistle with #4's "original" B&M 6 chime that had been on for many of her years at Edaville and MNG.
After the volunteer luncheon, work continued on #4, with Bill and Tim replacing the fireman's side injector.
Since the boiler had to be heated to remove the free oxygen and the injector tested, we fired #4 up to working pressure and took her out for a run up and down the line with diesel #1 for dead weight. Everything that was worked on appears to be good to go for Polar now.
Next work session is Nov 16 (not Nov 9th as originally reported here). This will be to install/test steam hoses and do the steam clean of #4 and the 2nd half of #7.
See you there!