February 2018 Work Planning

[Jeff Schumaker]

Bet that tie inserter will save LOTS of drudgery out on the line, especially with more track coming. 
Ya gotta run a demo video!

I have a feeling it will get a good workout during Spring Work Weekend.

Jeff S.

[Jeff Schumaker]

Work done on Saturday Feb 10:

* Machine shop: Jason and Alan were hatching something...

Ducks???

Jeff S.

[Bill Baskerville]

Work done on Saturday Feb 10:

* Machine shop: Jason and Alan were hatching something...

Ducks???

Jeff S.

.

Well Jeff, there is the steam locomotive shop mascot duck that occasionally appears in various photos of projects in the machine shop.

[Bill Baskerville]

Bet that tie inserter will save LOTS of drudgery out on the line, especially with more track coming. 
Ya gotta run a demo video!

I have a feeling it will get a good workout during Spring Work Weekend.

Jeff S.

My understanding that the planned SWW work on Davis Grade will provide the opportunity for the new tie inserter to prove it's mettle.

[Mike Fox]

Tie insterter will not be able to be used on the large part of the Davis Grade project, due to the planned work. But on other locations it will come in handy

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Saturday Mountain Extension Work Plan:

We have gotten permission from the DEP to clear trees from the permitted Section 3 "Pinch Point" area!  This will be done, along with burning as much of that new slash, and old slash remaining from prior clearing on Section 4.

Mike will drive up first thing in the AM.

Diesel work train with one coach will depart SS 8:30AM.  Volunteers who want to help with cutting and burning are encouraged to ride this train, however feel free to ride a later public train up to the action. 

Steam passenger trains will begin running at 10AM with two coaches.  They will run at least hourly, last train leaving SS at 2PM.

There will be a caboose set up at ToM with heat, hot chocolate, and Steve P to host the public.

Should be a good shin-dig, we hope to see you!!

see ya
Jason

[Stephen Piwowarski]

Hi Folks,

To help us get us started on the right foot this Saturday I'll be cooking up a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, meats, and fruit along with coffee and tea to wash it all down. I'll make eggs to order, but if you want poached, you might be on your own. I'll have breakfast up starting at 7:30 and will be clearing up at 8:15 before the work train departs.

See you there,
Steve

[Paul Uhland]

Davis Grade's coming  work will see lots of tie replacement. But the new inserter won't be used ??

[Ed Lecuyer]

The plan is to replace ALL the ties on Davis curve. This will be accomplished by removing the rail (temporarily), repairing the subgrade, placing new ties, then putting the rail and ballast back in place.

[Joe Fox]

Due to the significance of the repair, and the amount of work our volunteer man power efforts will be better utilized helping with this. If we did it with the machine, we would need to keep the track in place, and the finish product would not be nearly as good as if we removed the track.

The plan is to remove around 600' of track, level off the left over ballast to use as sub grade. Then put the track back down, reballast, and lift and tamp accordingly. This will give us new track, and a really well packed and tamped stretch of track that will finally be up out of the mud. The track in the current North end of Davis grade is sitting about an inch into the dirt, which is what prompted the need for this repair.

Currently it is not a dire repair, however as mentioned by Jason, this will be our last work weekend where we will have a chance to do this kind of work for a few years.

[Carl G. Soderstrom]

After reading the old News Letters (circa 2000) 600 feet seems to be a very ambitious
project for one (?) day.
Will you be putting down fabric? Isn't that where the track crew back then complained of soft ground?
Jason you were leading then.

Don't know if it would help others "from away", but if the photographer could put a card with the
"location" number in the pic, or in the caption, it would help visualize what is going on.
I know it is one more thing for overworked Mike but would help in the archives 20-30 years in the future.

[Wayne Laepple]

Carl -- This will be THE major project of the work weekend, beginning Friday morning and running through Sunday afternoon. I am sure there will be plenty of pre-work weekend staging of materials and other preliminary work. If they elect to pull all the spikes and bar the rails off the ties and out of the way, clearing the grade will go pretty fast. As for actually building the track, the WW&F gang has laid more than 1200 feet of rail starting on a bare grade in three days, so this 600 feet should be a walk in the park -- unless it's raining. Getting stone down on the whole works and getting it surfaced may be another story, but they are nothing if not persistent.

[Mike Fox]

See my reply in the Spring work weekend thread..

[Carl G. Soderstrom]

OK
So it is not a between trains exercise LOL

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for Saturday Feb 17:

* Steam Train Snow Day (or however it's being billed): Public steam trains to ToM for snoeshoeing, X-country skiing, looking at our cutting & burning progress
* Mountain ROW Clearing: We'll be clearing trees at the Pinch Point location
* Boxcar 67
* Whitefield Lions Club Train & Dollhouse Show: At the Augusta Civic Center (just to cause confusion), we have a table there.