Year: 2013

For the past year Scott Shaffer has maintained a time lapse camera in the tent to record the work that we do. Some days videos are not very interesting, but some give a great sense of what goes on. Click on the link below to see the work performed on Saturday  and Sunday August 30th and Sept 1. What you will see is about 16 hours of work in 3 minutes.

Now for the weekend of September 28th and 29th:  The most exciting news came during our second meeting with Inyo County regarding our engine house plan. The County has given us the preliminary approval for our project! While we still will need to go before the full Board of Supervisors to finalize the plan, the approval has been granted by all the necessary department heads, which is a huge step. To see some of the plans go the museum plan page.

As for the locomotive work: Dave, Rick, and Ashley spent the day putting the new cylinder insulation and jacketing on.

While they worked up front, Travis worked in the middle of the engine putting the last of the spring rigging up. The holes in which the equalizer pins go through the frame were very worn out. Since there is no easy way to bore out the holes we did the next best thing: welded them up and manually bored them out. It took a few hours but the results were what we wanted, relatively round holes that the pins fit very nicely in.

At the rear of the locomotive the rest of us worked on installing the new water glass, fitting some of the new cab plumbing, installing part of the cab floor and worked on the firebox door cover.

The weekend also saw the completion of most of the brake rigging repairs and the readjustment of Marty Westland’s valve grinding machine. Marty wanted to do one more finish pass with his grinder to really make it nice.

While we are just about ready to start rolling in flues down in Independence, up at the Mt. Rainier Scenic RR our drivers and driving boxes are well in process. MRSRR says they will be completed by the first of November which means we will hopefully have the #18 back on her feet soon.

And finally, mark your calendars for our annual BBQ fundraiser on Oct. 26th, don’t forget to stop by and say hello!

Over the weekend of August 28-29 we were back at it in Independence. On the top of the list of projects was to set up Marty Westland’s custom made valve surfacer. Some times its not about how much money you can spend to fix something, but simply to have the creativity and the resources to do the fix. Marty Westland came through for us with some creativity. His machine started life as an industrial size radial arm saw, most likely from the Kennecot Corp. in Ely, NV. Marty had aquired, cleaned and modified the the column and arm of the saw to mount on the side of the valve chest. On Saturday, Forest Newman and Doug Mull spent all day getting the rig mounted.

After some final adjustments to the height and swing of the machine, Marty mounted the grinder and off He and Forest went grinding a few thousands at a time. With the valve surface almost 1/4″ out of square it took about half the day to get it ground down flat.

After a few polishing passes, it was time to start lapping. By the end of the day on Monday, Marty had the rebuilt valve over 3/4 of the way lapped into the ground surface and complete. In September we should be ready to fully assemble the right side valve and piston.

While Marty and Forest were on the right, the rest of us were installing the left side piston.

Some of the other things we worked on included doing a final clean up on both the front and the rear tube sheets. We actually put a couple of the new tubes in to see how they looked, but we didn’t roll them into place. We also removed the fuisible plugs out of the firebox. These are a special plug that melts out if the water level is too low. Looking ahead, we should be ready to start intalling the tubes in the not to distant future.

Also on the agenda was the removal of the final small bit of wood flooring under the firebox door. The floor will be reinstalled in September. Scott Shaffer was also able to finish lapping the steam pipe seats in the smokebox, this has been a long time project that is nice to have complete. Finally, the cab is now back in Independence and all done except for some final window work, paint and wiring. Tom and Betty Dews really did a nice job on it. For now we will cover it up until we can move the engine and put it back on.

With all that work we were also able to meet with the County officials on our engine house site at the Eastern California Museum. Although not finalized yet, they are very supportive of the concept and we look forward to meeting again in September to complete some details. Check back on the website for drawings and pictures of our plan to be added in the near future. Thanks for your support!