May 2025 Work Reports

[James Patten]

Work done on Saturday May 24:

* Grounds work: Mike filled in some potholes in the walkways, driveways and parking lots.  He them moved some equipment into the back lot and dug up where a future dead storage track will go, and filled it in with stone.
* Deliveries: Both Dave and Bill R delivered cars-full of books and model railroad equipment donated by someone in Haverhill, Mass.  Marcel was beside himself in categorizing it all, assisted by Dan.
* Tin-type: A tin-type photographer was set up in the car barn to take people's pictures using this old-time photographic style.  Naturally he took some of #9 and crew.
* IT Assistance: I helped Bob H get set up in our Sharepoint.
* Public trains: Three trips to TOM, the Mountain track was temporarily out of service because of a low soft spot.
* Coach 9: Tom the gold leafer was trying to finish up the leafing.

[Dan Malkowski]

* Public trains: Three trips to TOM, the Mountain track was temporarily out of service because of a low soft spot.

With this, I send out an urgent call for crew. With some polls taken on Saturday the majority of available help I can get will be Friday. So that is my plan, with a good crew on Friday I plan to go up and fix this location before next Saturdays trains. Friday is the plan unless there is a better day that im not seeing where more people can be available.

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for Saturday May 31:

* Public trains: Ride the rails to hike the trails, plus the regular service.
* Albion: A team is headed north to retrieve the flanger and bring it back.
* Machine shop work
* Archives

[Ed Lecuyer]

Work Report - Saturday, May 31st:

* Public Trains - Diesel 52 did the honors for the 11am trip to Trout Brook and return. Jason and crew made an emergency repair to locomotive 9 to allow it to resume duties for the 1pm and 3pm departures. The morning rain made for light patronage all day.

* Albion - The "Flanger" that had been in the process of being reconstructed at Albion is now at Sheepscot. Note that this is really just a collection of parts that were once part of a WW&F Flanger. There is no carbody or flanger mechanism. The trucks are not from a WW&F car, and at least one coupler is not from the WW&F. The beams/sills that make up the reconstructed frame are very rotted and are likely not salvagable. We will save what we can and reuse it in some fashion to be determined.

* Machine shop work - Besides the aforementioned repairs to #9, Chris was working on the X-Cart and Nick A was tinkering with vaccum brakes.

* Vaccum Brakes - an impromptu test of the vaccum brakes on a two-car train was attempted. A new point of failure was identified.

* Archives - Linda was busy with a guest from Trains magazine. Marcel has been cataloging a large model train collection that was donated for sale.

* Food - Nancy cooked ham, mashed potatoes, carrots and desert.