On Saturday the 9th of July we had a group of 13 Volunteers show up for the work session on Saturday as well as 4 visitors… then 7 of us came in on Sunday morning for a few hours. Our timbers did not arrive on time to work on the Engine frame Mock-up, but more planning for it did occur.
Several BIG NEWS items did happen in the last few weeks… Bill Liebman, from down in Cass, WV donated and brought us up a dozen 4-drawer file cabinets for Small Parts Storage… These are greatly appreciated, and sorting and filling them will start shortly. Secondly, more great news was that on their way to Corry, Steve, Grady and Rob stopped off at Richard Bosch’s place in Slippery Rock, Pa. and picked up a few VERY nice items that Richard has donated and brought them to the Shop… We received a great old and well-seasoned Southbend Lathe which will do just fine for some basic machining in the future; a nice small floor mount drill Press and a beautiful large Baldor Grinder and Floor stand… THANK YOU RICH!!!!
Additionally, and I will write more later on this, we have received one of the 21 National Heritage Annual Grants from NRHS (National Railway Historical Society) and also a wonderful donation from the Mountain State Railroad & Logging Historical Association (MSR&LHA), which is the volunteer group at Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in West (by Gawd) Virginia, which was responsible for the first 14 years of restoration of the Moore & Keppel #6 (now #9) Class “C” Climax… many of our volunteers on the A-313 were heavily involved in that great effort… #1551 literally rising from the ashes!!! Thanks to both of these great organizations in helping us continue with the Class “A” 313 restoration Project.
Back to the shop… more cleaning, welding and grinding on arch-bars took place… we are about half way done on these.
A concentrated effort over both days took place in cleaning out one corner of the shop and beginning to run electrical conduit for our future small machine shop area. This extension, materials and labor, completed our earlier Grant from the Corry Community Foundation for our first electrical expansion project… THANKS C.C.F….. We will keep pushing it forward.
Some much needed longer sawhorses were built by Ron and crew.
Bill Ritts came in for a short time to check out the Climax engines following our running of them at our Open-House for short spurts… We fired them up… and the report is…. “They look great and are running fine!”
More time was put in sorting out the Cab uprights, inspecting them, putting together the back wall supports, doing some reverse engineering and trying to understand just what the thought process was in assembling the skeleton framework, roof bows and side fascia… slowly we’re getting a grasp on it… it looks simple… but that is about where that thought ends!
Thanks to Sandy, Connie and Sue for putting together another great “Lunch Box.”
Next Work Session 7/23/2022… See you then.
Builder Number is now on display on our Ridg-U-Rak.