EDWR general manager Keith Berry gets ready to step into the red zone to couple the flatcar to the El Dorado Western Railroad No. 1 for the first time.
The Plymouth and flatcar on the tracks beside Oriental Street in the historic town of El Dorado.
Steven Karoly takes his turn at operating the No. 1. The crew ran the El Dorado Western Railway No. 1 up and down the rail this afternoon. The 18-ton Plymouth locomotive was donated to the railway on Friday, December 17, 2010 by the CertainTeed Corporation in Chowchilla, California.
The Plymouth approaches Hagen's Crossing at Oriental Drive. The banner over the radiator thanks three companies for their assistance in the donation of the Plymouth locomotive to the railway. They include the CertainTeed Corporation for its donation of the engine, Diamond Crane of Diamond Springs for lifting the locomotive onto the track and Bordges Timber of El Dorado for transporting the engine to El Dorado.
Cal Jessiman relaxes for a moment after completing the first leg of his run to Hagen's Crossing.
Keith holds the plywood sheet while John cuts a wall panel for the new wood cab to Arnold. As a local contractor, John has volunteered his time on several key woodworking projects since last fall.
John screws one of the top plates onto the studs for the cab.
Steve helps John mount the end piece on the rafters to the cab last week. The cab was 90 percent done when the crew left at 5:30 p.m. last Saturday. John installed the windows Wednesday and worked on some of the trim.
Wayne waits for the radiator as Keith brings it forward with the forklift. Bill placed a temporary set of running boards over the gravel ground covering.
Bill guides Keith as he operates the forklift. It was a delicate operation that required Keith to raise and lower the radiator in very small increments.
Eric prepares to move a pallet of parts for the Michigan-California Lumber Co. bobbie car. We believe the bobbie car, which the Mich-Cal once used to transport rough cut lumber across the American River gorge is the only one remaining.
Doug Youngberg, left, and Bill catch up on news on the railroad front while Eric loads the bobbie car parks on Doug's trailer. Since Doug's move to Oregon last year, he had become one of a handful of long distance volunteers. Doug plans to rebuild the bobbie car in his new machine shop.
Keith, left, and Doug discuss possible problems with the forklift. At first they though it may be a hydraulic leak. They later determined that the cause of excessive smoking and fluid loss could be a transmission seal.
Keith Berry stopped by the engine house to paint a primer coat on Arnold Z. Garrett, Ken and Scott have been restoring the the Plymouth diesel switcher for about nine or 10 months. The old cab was removed last spring. Since then, the crew has removed the ballast, wheel sets, journal boxes and leaf springs. And they have been actively scraping and chipping old dirt, rust and paint from the chassis. They are at the stage where they can begin rebuilding and reconditioning the individual parts.
"This is perfect painting weather. The sun's hot," said Keith. He wanted to get it done before long-overdue rains arrive next week. The high today will be in the mid-70s today in Placerville. The current plan is to keep the body gloss black silver lettering.A fourth, the Diamond & Caldor Tally Ho No. 10 railbus, is owned by the El Dorado County Historical Museum. EDWRF Vice-President Keith Berry announced Saturday that the El Dorado County Museum Commission approved funding to restore the railbus to its original Diamond & Caldor configuration.
The commission released the initial $1,000 to purchase metal to restore the steel cab and frame. Future funds will be available to rebuild the Waukesha engine and redesign a new brake system. (I mistakenly reported the engine as a Waukesha. See this post and this one.)
The Plymouth crew of Garrett, Ken and Scott continued work on Arnold. They were able to move both wheel sets to spot where we can load them on one of the pick up trucks. Garrett has working with a few Sacramento machine shops to turn the wheels. They closed the day chipping and priming one side of the locomotive's large steel frame.
Welder Dale continued building another set of saw horses. This set will stand 4 feet above ground level. We plan to use this set to access the high points on the No. 4.
Dale also built a second chop saw stand. Since the railway has a large stock of old boiler flues, we plan to build several saw horse sets for our supporters. If interested, please contact me at my email address (Steve -at- SeabeeCook.com). President Eric Stohl has not set a donation price yet.
Sam's "Rube Goldberg" valve shaper is nearing completion after 15 months of trail and error design and construction. Sam and Bill spent Saturday installing the pneumatic controls to the shaper. We expect a test run soon.
Housekeeping work also continued. Keith vacuumed about 10 pounds of bead material from the bead blaster. He then poured a fresh 50-pound bag into the machine. His next project is to clean the brake parts to the flat car.
I have more news, including the donation of 1,500-feet of high-grade rail to the foundation. I'll post more news through the week.
Much of the work in the railroad is dusty, tedious and time consuming. Here, Ken Romine cleans rust off of the journal boxes to Arnold Z, our Plymouth locomotive. Ken and his son, Scott, will paint the boxes today.
Eight-year old Logan paints the topside of one of the Railbus trailer trucks.
Locomotive engineer Garrett Augustus uses a large sledge hammer to forcibly remove a spring hander from Arnold Z, our Plymouth locomotive.
EDWRF President Eric Stohl (not visible) used the forklift to flip this truck. Treasurer Bill Rodgers hammers the chains off of the forks.
Ken Romine drilled out the hexagon-head bolts to day on all four journal boxes to Arnold Z today. Ths was a last resort attempt to remove the left- and right-hand wear plates on the boxes.
Garrett Augustus returns to the dirty work of running a railroad. After the boiler committee meeting this morning, Agustus returned to his main project, which is cleaning our Plymouth locomotive, Arnold Z.
At our last work day two weeks ago, Garrett Augustus, Ken Romine and Scott Romine finished removing the last two journal boxes from Arnold Z.
I only had a few minutes to stop by the engine house yesterday. An adult daughter is in town and I spent the day with her.
When I walked in around 9:30 a.m., Garrett was attacking the Arnold Z with a needle gun. Sam and Bill were working on a few items in the machine shop. And Eric and Logan stripped threaded bolts from one of the trucks to the Railbus trailer.
Last weekend, nine volunteers labored on the No. 4 Shay, the Plymouth and the trailer. It was the best turnout the El Dorado Western Railway has had this summer.
Garrett, Ken and Scott removed the last two journal boxes to the Plymouth. Dale, Eric and Logan, our newest and youngest trainman, were removing the brake shoes and tumbler bar from the Railbus truck. And Sam and Bill continued in the machine shop with Sam's valve shaping tool. Keith helped where needed.
(In case you're interested, I take keep historical notes for the newsletter and the blog, in addition to being the photographer.)
Scott had "planned on getting those two journal boxes off" the wheel set Saturday. Several sick volunteers and other projects in progress left Scott with nothing to do but clean the Plymouth.
The valley crew made its long trek into the El Dorado Gold Country from Sacramento last Saturday to continue work on Arnold Z, El Dorado Western Railway's Plymouth switcher.
I stopped by the engine house this morning for a few hours. There wasn't much going on as this is the "off" weekend. In the photo Dave Spohr (left) and Eric Stohl discuss the driveshaft renovation project.This morning, Eric Stohl and Dale Mace were installing the final corner brace for the Shay. When I left at 11 a.m., Dale was welding the joint between the base plate and the rod. The brace project will be done once Eric and Dale install the brace.
Of the six braces, three were completely fabricated by Dale. Only three original braces were found when found when the crew started this project some 12 or 13 years ago. Dale and Eric were able to install two of the original braces without any modification. The third was modified some.
Sam Thompson continued building his valve shaper in the machine shop. Dave Spohr was milling one of the short male drive stafts at the other end of the shop (see photo to left).
The Shay geared locomotive used a line shaft to drive the right wheel on each axel set. ShayLocomotives.com describes this unique arrangement:
These line shafts were attached to square shafts through couplings. The square shafts slid into sleeve shafts, which were attached to the crankshaft through another set of couplings. The square shaft sliding freely in the sleeve shaft allowed the locomotive to take sharp curves. As the truck turned to follow the track curve, the distance between the crankshaft and the truck increased or decreased and the square shaft slid in or out while still rotating, delivering power to the truck from the pistons.
Keith Berry described the restoration process in the spring issue of the newsletter:
Dave [has been working with Sam and Dale since February to restore the male] driveshaft faces to specification. Over normal locomotive operation, surface-to-surface friction from turning and the constant presence of dirt kicked up from the ballast ground the driveshaft faces down.
Sam's challenge was to locate an arbitrary starting surface point to weld/build the contact surfaces and end up with a four-sided square drive shaft. Once established, Dale welds, and Dave mills the surfaces. Then Dale welds, and Dave again mills, and around it goes. Or in this case, square it becomes! Eventually, the shaft will reach finished specification and they'll start on the next shaft.
In the photo to the right, Dave used a fly cutter to shave 0.045-inch off the face of the shaft. Dale can only add metal to two surfaces at a time. One of the milled surfaces is used to lay the shaft level on the milling machine. The other is used as a gauge.
Dave feeds the surface being cut at a rate of 3/8-inch per minute. It takes 50 minutes to mill each surface.
Dave said Dale would ultimately add metal to edges so that he could form a true edge on the shaft. The edges take most of the punishment as the shaft slides in and out of the companion driveshaft.
After I returned from the engine house, I glanced over at the billet pile. "Wow! They keep growing," was all I could say.
