June 2015 Work Planning

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for weekend of June 6 - 7, 2015:

* Car barn - bracing trusses.
* Loco 9
* Kubota work

[James Patten]

Work done on Saturday, June 6

* Whitefield Section House - Mike dug a ditch for the posts, placed the posts, and filled the ditch back in.  This is getting ready for Steve P and Annie B's wedding in two weeks, which will feature a work weekend type atmosphere.
* Car barn - Several of us put in bracing, and started putting 2x4s up for the metal roof attachments.  The trusses are still pretty wobbly.  We ran out of ambition mid-afternoon.  The roof attachments are about 2/3 done on the west side on the upper half of the roof.
* Loco 9 - Marcel was working on the cab.  He's nearly done with the roof, starting to work on the side posts.  On one of the posts he was trying to leach out old oil soaked in to the board by using Acetone (I think that's what it was).  I've also heard that the cast iron sheets for the jackets has been shipped out to be cut, polished and treated.

[Brendan Barry]

Mike back filling around the foundation posts for the front wall of the section house.





Right above the three yellow dots are foundation posts for the back wall.

[James Patten]

Reminder to Jason - please keep us updated with your plans for the week!

[Stephen Piwowarski]

Those foundations look great. Thanks for the hard work Mike.

A couple notes on the Whitefield Section House. First, I'll be up again this weekend. I will be finishing the dance floor for the wedding Friday evening into Saturday (6/13) morning but after that I would like to get the floor in for the section house so we could just frame and sheath the following Saturday. A nice goal would be a weather-tight building by the end of Saturday 6/20.

Take care,
Steve

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Thanks for the reminder James.

Yesterday I de-narrow-gauged for the morning and helped the 470 guys in the morning.  Yesterday afternoon I delivered the iron sheets for no 9's jacket to the Waterjet cutters.

This morning we ran a successful steam charter for the Friends of the RR Mu of PA.  This afternoon a variety of projects are happening, including brake tuning on coach 3, drilling holes in no 9'a jacket band clips, and doing the jacket sheet layout for the Waterjet folks (to be sure no iron is wasted.

Work will continue this week on finalizing and prepping no 9 for the jacket, as well as work on the spark arrestor and some other details.  We may be prepping the fire car to water the weeds as well.

Other projects as they come!

See ya
Jason

[John Kokas]

Jason,

Is the plan to apply the Russian Iron coating prior to the water-jet cutting or visa-versa?  I think more than a few of us would love to hear the steps involved in this process as no one that I know of is even trying this.

[James Patten]

First the jacket pieces will be water-jet cut, then they go to be polished.  It's cheaper if we polish after the cutting.  Then the pieces go to be blued.

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for weekend of June 13-14:

* Board meeting Friday evening 4:30 to whenever.  All members are welcome.
* Whitefield Section House - laying the floor
* Piwowarski wedding prep - Steve and Annie are in charge of this.
* Loco 9
* Car barn roof work
* Local Masons have an event going on at Alna Center on Saturday afternoon.

[James Patten]

Work done on Saturday June 13

* Car barn - Fred, Steve Z, and new volunteer Megan(?) put up extra bracing along the trusses to support extra bracing to the posts later.  
* Whitefield section house - Zack figured out level between all the posts, then put down the basic square framing for the floor.  Steve P and his future brother in law (sorry, forgot the name) were trying to figure out the rest of the framing.
* Wedding prep - Steve P and future b-in-law built a dance floor in the basement.  The dance floor once used will go to another group.
* Loco 9 - Marcel working on the cab.  Jason working on something else.
* TOM stub switch - The stub tends to swell in hot weather and not be throwable, so this week a crew put in spacers to hopefully push the track north on the spur.  The first trip removed the spacers and each trip the space was measured.  The stub was moveable on all trips.

At a few minutes before 11, a group of old cars showed up for a train ride.  The old cars ranged from 30s era (my guess) to 70s.  Later the Mason's showed up for the 2:30 train, and were dropped at Alna Center.  They were picked up around 5.

[Ira Schreiber]

The old cars did not go for a train ride.
The people in them did, however.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Auto-train service to Alna Center and points north (a little).  Old cars only, please...

[Paul Uhland]

 As MASH's Major Frank Burns would say..."You GUYYYS!"

[Ira Schreiber]

The north crossover stub switch needs a little more tuning as it took two of us to throw it this afternoon.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Already planning on it