January 2018 Work Planning

[Mike Fox]

Getting the word out early. Wednesday, January 3rd, we are planning a tree cutting day. Temps are expected to be 40 degrees warmer than this morning, with a high of 22 expected. We will be going to TOM, and walking down the mountain to cut and stack the brush and logs out of the way, unless we build a fire to burn some of it.

Saturday, we are planning to start at the Trout Brook site. I will make an attempt to back drag everything there on Wednesday, so we can walk around easier on Saturday. We plan on burning, but if that does not work out, we will limb the trees, stack the brush for chipping, and move the logs to a spot out of the way for removal later.

Hope to see you at one or both of these days.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

How many volunteers are planning on joining us tomorrow?  Please respond here if you plan on coming.  We’re developing our plans from this...

Thanks,
Jason

[Bob Holmes]

I would come but I think it's beyond me physically.  Perhaps next week...

[Jonathan B. Smith]

I'll be there

[James Patten]

Anticipated work for Saturday Jan 6:

* ROW clearing at the bridge site. 
* Boxcar 67
* Snow clearing

It's supposed to be bitterly cold again this weekend.

[Mike Fox]

Another one of Jasons pictures.

This shows the yard after todays activity, a little switching to get 52 in bay 4. This is the turn table track, and was plowed and flanged yesterday..

[Ed Lecuyer]

and flanged

Wait... I thought the flanger was no longer serviceable???

[Tom Casper]

doesnt look flanged to me!

Tom
C.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

The flanger only goes to railhead height and about 30” wide as we experiment with design.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

Plow Extra

The current (tentative) plan is to plow the line on Tuesday, January 9, as the temperature will reach into the 30’s. 

The high tomorrow is predicted at 1.  Snow doesn’t want to move at that temp.

We are making an effort to keep the line open this winter to allow access to the right of way beyond end of track for tree clearing.  This is for sections 1, 2, 3 and part of 4.  The bridge site is accessed from the north.

See ya
Jason

[Jason M Lamontagne]

The Tuesday crew rebuilt the snow flanger, with a stronger attachment where I thought a previous failure caused the first one to be crumpled.  Well- short story short- I crumpled version two, pretty much immediately, when the mechanism failed to retract and hit a switch component.  No injuries, no switch damage- another 2mph hit.  I do sincerely apologize to the Tuesday crew- we were feeling quite triumphant, until we weren’t.

A good hard study revealed a few truths.  One- this is more of a rail scraper than a flanger- but that’s ok because that’s what we need right now.  Two- we needed more retraction force.  There were other, more subtle changes required.

Today (Saturday) our crew fixed again.  Alan coined it “flanger flanger flanger,” which sounded better to us than “flanger, version 3.”  We removed the center point of the flanging attachment- as it added little value to our rail scraping goals, and was the area which kept finding switch components.  We also flipped the cylinders over so the cylinder ram isn’t on the raising side.  We also arranged a 3:1 lever arm for the raising mechanism- resulting in 2600 pounds of raising force, vs the old 700 pounds.  We also changed the pivot point so there’s far less downward rotational moment due to the horizontal snow load.

We’ll test it on Monday.  Maybe we’ll have a chance to build flanger flanger flanger flanger.  Or maybe it would be rail scraper rail scraper. 

We would LOVE to build a real plow and flanger.  With wheels, these projects would be very attainable.

See ya
Jason

[James Patten]

Work done on Saturday Jan 6:

* As Jason alluded to in the previous post, a crew rejiggered the flanging apparatus.
* Car 67: Zack finished the ladders.
* Snow: Mike plowed the remainder of the parking lot with the Dodge, then went up to Trout Brook to plow the Converancy lot and he got the bulldozer going and dozed some snow.
* Inventory: Linda and I reconciled our inventory discrepencies and did some recounting (and found some book boxes we missed!).

[Bob Holmes]

Jason, this may be another topic for discussion, but what are the issues related to getting more wheels?  Is it lack of availability?  Can one regauge 3 ft wheels (EBT?)?  Or other things that many of us may be unfamiliar with?  Thanks...

[John Kokas]

Bob,

As part of our Mt. Union discussion, EBT wheels are 26-28", not the 20" that we use.  I had thought about it myself but at this point the best option for us is to construct new wheelsets based on the original designs for both passenger and freight equipment needs.

[Jason M Lamontagne]

It’s not entirely fair of me to put that much blame on wheels, but they are the most costly single component at roughly $1400 each.  Therefore the starting cost of a car is already $11,000.

There’s a price break if you buy more than 50 wheels...

See ya
Jason