November 2019 Work Reports

[Mike Fox]

No Paul. The ground needs to be excavated, solid good draining gravel installed and a foundation put in.

[Bob Holmes]

Presumably including at least one serving pit under one of the tracks in the roundhouse

[John Kokas]

I hope that all the stalls in the roundhouse will have a pit.  More money - yeah, but worth it!

[Alan Downey]

* Machine shop: Alan was trying out a new toy he got, a drill bit sharpener.  He was making good progress.

I saw it during the work weekend, as a person who has dulled a drill and had to hand sharpen it to finish some job or other, I can see the usefulness of it. Post a picture and explain the range of sizes it can sharpen to a factory edge for the others members. A great item to have in any shop.
M. Nix

Hi Mike,

The machine is a Sellers 6G drill grinder, and can sharpen drill bits from 5/16" to 3" in diameter, but there are other sharpeners which are better suited to drill bits below 3/8". I don't have an exact date on when it was built, but I believe it to be pre 1950's It is essentially an overhead line-shaft machine which was "redesigned" by Sellers when individual motors started to power machinery. The "redesign" consisted of bolting a 1.25" plate to the bottom of the already heavy machine, and plunking a motor with a flat-belt pulley on the new base. In converting it to run on single-phase power, I moved it to v-belt drive. I purchased it from a tool collector in western Mass. and brought it home with my "rig". At this point, the machine is essentially on-loan to the museum.

It should be noted that this is not a tool which is available for general use by shop volunteers. Due to the finesse required to sharpen a bit without ruining the bit or the grinding wheel, it should only be used by volunteers who I have trained. I hope to very soon have a small cadre of shop volunteers trained on it to be able to help keep our stock of drill bits in good shape!

I actually don't have any recent pictures of the machine, and I haven't asked Stewart if I can borrow his pictures from Facebook- so here's a similar 6-G. There are some differences in guarding and the electrical controls, but the important parts are the same. It's a really neat machine.


And so that I can continue to show off just how much my little Focus can do, this was at the NH state line, parking with the other "rigs"  .

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for Saturday November 16:

* Car barn extension
* Parking lot cleanup
* Roundhouse track 3
* Tank car 14
* Pavilion prep

[Gordon Cook]

It should be noted that large size, good quality, new drill bits are very expensive. The cheap drills available tend to have inferior material and chip or break.
We have a lot of old but good quality drill bits but they aren't in very good shape, so this has been an ongoing issue for the shop force. Sharpening a drill properly so it has the correct angles is not easy, and poorly sharpened or dull drills make for a poor outcomes.
This machine will mean that we now have a whole set of properly sharpened drills.
So, thanks Alan, for the loan and set up of this machine.

[Paul Uhland]

Another excellent shop home run!
Having tried to sharpen bits at 2926, it is damned hard to do right!

[Paul Uhland]

James...will building permanent RH Track 3 interfere with the temp display track just laid?

[Paul Uhland]

Your weather looks frigid, currently. How's stove number two install coming?

[James Patten]

The roundhouse east wall will begin somewhere about where the coal pocket east wall is.  We'll probably have to lift some of the track when we get around to doing that.

[Mike Fox]

Roundhouse east wall is east of the run through track. The only track that will not be lifted during construction of the Roundhouse is the turn table lead, which is the old track 7, that comes by bay 4 of the shop.

[Fred Morse]

Very,very little work was done due to ice on everything outside where the work was planned on the car barn. Lets hope next week will be better.

[James Patten]

Sorry, I meant the SOUTH wall is about where the coal bin south wall is.

[Mike Fox]

Ahh. You have lost your bearing..must have gotten turned around on the turntable.

[Bill Baskerville]

Sorry, I meant the SOUTH wall is about where the coal bin south wall is.

That would mean that the spread of the three tracks would be fairly large, which would make the RH quiet roomy inside I would think.  That would be a good thing. 

We would then have indoor storage for three locomotives and room around them for minor maintenance.  The shop space would be freed up for projects and major repairs.  That said, we all know that there seems to be a lot of construction and major repair projects that keep coming at us.  It is both a good and a bad thing that our acquisitions, both owned, loaned and under construction continue to outpace our ability to construct covered storage for our rolling stock and MOW equipment.

Now I feel bad for having said that because I know we are all working continuously to improve our facilities.