Hello All,
This has been (and will continue to be) and amazing project. Hands down- the most amazing part has been our team of volunteers. This absolutely wouldn’t have happened without the tremendous team effort, made up of individuals who all stepped up their level of involvement to challenge of the many difficult tasks before us.
Steve Lennox, Randy Beach, Mark Cheetham, Eric Schade, Phil Bleauvelt: these hard hitting guys, already used to giving two days a week, all gave at least that and sometimes 4 days in a week. Any given day you’d find Steve hopping around like a monkey doing hard physical tasks in tight little places. Eric built cribbing on the south side which settled nary a 1/4” under the full weight of the bridge and the temp spans. Randy kept a firm handle on most of our transit work while performing many intermediate tasks. Mark was everywhere- providing a brawny back at the drop of a hat.
There are so many others who stepped up: Steve Zuppa, Fred Morse, Steve Piwowarski, Bob Longo, Dana Deering, Zack Wyllie, Dave Buczkowski, Alan Downey, Bob Holmes, Stewart Rhine, Jonathan St Mary, JB Smith, Jay Barta, Al Michaels, Bryce Weeks, Bill Reidy, Mike Fox, Roger Whitney, Kevin Keirstead, Paul Crabb, Bill Baskerville, Ed Lecuyer, Gordon Davis and others. Joe Fox managed to be a key player on the bridge while simultaneously performing a tremendous effort to prep for FWW. Brendan Barry has give us multiple weeks of intensive volunteer effort- 8-10 hour days, 7 days a week, weeks on end, being the sole museum operator entrusted with Chesterfield’s equipment. If I forgot you, yell at me; I deserve it.
Chesterfield Associates crew Dave Allan, Zach, Davis and Troy also deserve a special call out for being so flexible and patient in the execution of our plan; in fact Dave was instrumental in lending his many years of expertise in refining the details of our plan. Of course Wayne Duffet, and his associate Christopher Snow, have volunteered invaluable engineering services as well. Jeff Verney, our local excavation contractor, has been available with material at the drop of a hat- and handled the site prep like the professional that he truly is.
Every one of these people has been critical to this project’s success. Every one. Everyone has been a team player: no one turns down help when offered, and is happy to do their part without recognition. But everyone deserves recognition.
And while this happened- we still ran our railroad, with a multitude of new events and community engagement opportunities.
I’m proud to be a part of this. Let’s keep going; we’re well on our way to Farmington.
See ya
Jason
