Category: Restoration

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.

Report on last weekend’s Work Session #2: 5/7/2022

More progress was made on the Trucks with Steve and Grady adding some material to areas of the Arch-Bars via weld build-up and then grinding, replacing some of the metal which has eroded over the years.

Connie and Ron, along with Chelsea Oliver were hard at work most of the day building more saw-horses… we now have more than half of what we will be needing as we get into the woodworking phases… great progress.

Rob brought a small drafting table to donate which will come in handy… and then turned his attention to restoring an old Canedy-Otto Drill Press from the early 1900’s… It Started out life as a Drill Press in the Corry High School Shops… at the old Hatch Building on Wright St…. I remember seeing the equipment there in use when I was in 1st or 2nd Grade in the elementary school next door…. when the HS itself was on the other side of town, near the Corry Journal offices on W. South St. When the new High School opened in the early 50’s the drill press was donated to the Mead Park Association for their Hobby Shop where woodwork for the future Corry Museum was being created. The press is single phase 220. It was last used most likely in the mid 60’s or 70’s… and in cleaning things out of the Hobby Shop/Maintenance Building at Mead Park a couple of years ago, it was donated to Corry RAILS. Rob got it wired into the main panel, got it running and spent some time cleaning and oiling it good… a temporary new flat-belt broke when he tried it on a different pulley… it needs some cup oilers, a new belt and a little TLC …but it is really looking good… fine for doing small drilling projects… At close to 100 years old, it is getting a third life. Thanks Rob.

Pat Gorman, a volunteer from over in Bradford came to town and jumped in and helped Alex with scraper and wire-brush work on the Trucks… man-oh-man, that’s a lot of work!…. and WOW do they look better! Pat has helped us out before with model train shows and last year’s Open House.

Bob Spaeth, from Robert’s Machine Company in Emporium, PA stopped by for a couple of hours to visit and to check out the Climax A-313 project on his way to another project… It was good seeing him after chatting with him online over the last few months…. Bobbie will be back, I’m sure.

The Two cylinder Climax engine is home following rebuild and assembly by our extraordinary machinist Bill Ritts, with new Niagara Piston Rings and some new jewelry, in the form of new Oiler Caps to replace some missing ones.

The caps were produced by another of our fabulous machinists over the Winter months from a nice chunk of brass donated by yet another Friend of A-313. ….

and then we began putting together the shifter mechanism for the two-speed. We will be posting some video soon of it running on air as Bill and Norm tested it out. In the near future it will be mounted on a mock-up Engine Cradle with the driveline gears, or counter-gears, mounted along with the shifter and reverser levers so that you can see how it all functions. We will then be able to demo it on air for short spurts.

The Next Work Session is THIS COMING WEEKEND… the 14th-15th…. ALSO >>>> mark your calendar for June 11th for the Open House here at Corry RAILS… ads coming soon…

For the Summer and early Fall, here is a Tentative list of Work Session Weekends…

5/14, 6/4, 6/25, 7/9, 7/23, 8/13, 8/27, 9/17, 10/1, 10/22. Watch for updates and Double-Check dates before just showing up… these are TENTATIVE.

Toot-toot!!…. backing out of the Station for now.

FIRST WORK SESSION OF 2022

Finally!!! the snow left us long enough for us to get in a very quickly prepared Work Session last weekend, April 23rd-24th…. but as I am writing this, snow is again falling… ever so lightly, but it is in the air… and the temps are back in the low 30’s. We knew we wouldn’t have a huge turnout simply because there wasn’t enough time for many of our volunteers to plan for it… AND… it was such a gorgeous day that many others were busy with yard cleanup and all of the accumulated Honey-Do’s on the perpetual list… understood!!!

We did have several of our Stalwarts make it to Corry for the couple of days, and for that we are grateful… Thanks to Grady, Steve and Bill for making the long treks… joining Norm, Tom and me in pulling more stuff apart and continuing with the creating and dimensioning of the new drawings. We certainly enjoyed their company and efforts… and managed to get quite a bit done. Thanks to Sandy and Ginny for keeping us all fed… “Job well done, Ladies!”

Steve sweeping up the rust and dirt after disassembling the arch-bar components.

The Trucks are now completely apart…. a bolt inventory and count for the Trucks has been taken, and now we are ready to begin cleaning those parts and repairing a couple of them that need some attention…. talk about rust and dirt… WOW… were those pieces stuck tight!!! A lot of pneumatic needle-scaling was done this weekend, the result being that all of those pieces are now ready for some serious grease and crud cleaning and sand blasting in preparation for a final inspection followed by primer and paint. Still more work to go, but it won’t be too long before the trucks begin going back together.

Bill was busy on the lap-top adding more dimensions, and between the two of us we managed to make some headway in some of the wooden parts identification… some of Keith’s notes are visible on some of the pieces and others have his business cards rolled up and stuck in holes with further identification… then there were the pieces with no ID… it all comes down to good old logic, looking at some old photos when available, and a process of elimination…. slowly but surely we will get the picture of how it went together back in the day.

We picked up a vacuum for our sand blast cabinet, and managed to get all of the nuts and bolts in place, putting together the cabinet…. a bit more plumbing and procure a stock of sand and media and the Sand Blast cabinet for small parts will be ready to use.

WORK SESSIONS:

We DO HAVE A DATE set for our next Work Session, and that will be on Saturday and Sunday morning, May 7th-8th. Continuing with cleaning, inspection and parts identification and sorting will be one of the tasks. Building of more Sawhorses will be happening as well. If our electrician is able to make it that weekend we will be continuing to extend our service lines in the building.

OPEN HOUSE:

We are always looking for more and new volunteers for Work Sessions… and we will need more volunteers to help out at our upcoming Open House… which will be on June 11th. Volunteers and relief-volunteers are needed for Information tables, signing in folks coming in the gate, selling memorabilia and tickets for raffles, and etcetera. So, drop me a note at corryrails@gmail.com to my attention… I’m Carl. Last year was a huge success but we didn’t have any extra volunteers… just barely enough… we all worked the whole day straight through… having twice as many volunteers would be wonderful… you don’t need to be an expert on any of this stuff… there is always someone around who can answer the tough questions. This year the Open House will be on the same Saturday as Corry-Fest (June 11th) which brings a lot of people home to Corry… It’s also Alumni Weekend… but there hasn’t been one for the last two years… so the town should be packed. There are a lot of folks who haven’t seen our project yet. We are also taking names of displayers and vendors for that Saturday.

Stay Tuned… and See you soon…

NOVEMBER 2021 WORK SESSION – Finally Caught up on my Posts!!!

After our return from a successful trip to Alaska where we were able to retrieve some more of the missing locomotive parts and receive the original Builder Plate donated by the Andersen Family along with working on research, photos and video for our Documentary…. and then the move of the engines to Bill’s Machine Shop for evaluation and assembly, we were able to plan around everyone’s schedules and a case of Covid for one last end-of-the-year Work Session in November.

Thanks to a Mini-Grant from the Corry Community Foundation (Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!) we were able to add some much needed electrical expansion in our restoration building. This included an exterior light at the front door as well as one inside the front door, a run for an expansion Sub-Panel, several more breakers in the Main Panel and a run of conduit following the shelving on the west wall with several 4-way electrical outlets… YEA!!!! Progress is happening! We have been able to save some through additional material donations for beginning the expansion of electrical on the east side of the building next.

We had about 18 volunteers show up for the Saturday Session, including some new faces… welcome guys!!! They came not only from here in Corry, but from Clymer, Jamestown, Meadville, Columbus and Marietta, Ohio, Morgantown, WV and Virginia as well…. our fans and volunteers are not just local Corryites but truly National and International in scope… over the next couple of years we will see folks from all over showing up to be a part of this Build.

Some donated lumber was crafted into several stout saw-horses for use in our work on the frame… more will be built in the same manner in the future… it will take a bunch of them to support about 28 pieces of the frame floating a couple of feet off the floor (working height) during the cutting, drilling, mortise and tennoning, and multiple fittings of the new frame pieces in the near future.

Bill Simonton was up from Virginia to continue the work he is doing on the construction drawings for fabrication of the frame and the 3-D renditions of the locomotive… thanks Bill for all you do my friend.

Several worked on assembling of a newly donated sand-blast cabinet and a donated new portable engine hoist. Others, lead by Grady Smith, began the disassembly of the second geared truck. A handful came back on Sunday morning to finish up a few details… and then everyone headed home as reports were coming in of winds picking up and snow beginning to drop in mid-Ohio and central-PA.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the testing of our three steam whistles under air pressure… each had their own characteristics…. one was very deep in tone…. the 3-chime was the sweetest sound… and the original Climax Shop Whistle certainly got your attention… Walt Casler had said that in it’s day it could be heard in Spartansburg when it was blown… WOW!…. loud is the only word I have!!! and of course, ear protection was provided, since this was inside the building….lol!!!! Brad Minor from Clymer, NY did his magic on the whistles and came prepared to build a manifold off of our air tank…. thanks Brad!

Sandy and Connie put together a great and warming lunch for us all… ummmm, good!!! and much appreciated by all.

Weather is the single factor that will predict our next work session… Winter is here, albeit so far it has been rather mild as far as the snow amount (about 40″ so far), but it can still get bitterly cold in the building… and the building is uninsulated… next up is continuing the electrical, building more saw-horses and sorting out and understanding the wood from the cab, deck, walls and roof… and making drawings of that portion of the Build. Finishing the disassembly to the Trucks… and then cleaning and inspection… will follow.

Background work is ongoing for determining the next steps for the Boiler and Frame. Patterns are nearly ready to go to the foundry for making a couple of replacement parts.

With 2022 here…it is now a new year – Four and a half years since we started on this journey…. Happy New Year everybody!!!! Finally I am caught up on all of my posts from 2021…. stay tuned for what will be coming next at Corry RAILS (check out our new items in our store at our website corryrails.com …MAKE sure you “LIKE” our Facebook page… at the TOP OF THE PAGE and left side under the banner… that will send you notices of when we have a new posting…. also “Like” the post… gives us better numbers to gauge our progress in Social Networking… Thanks!)

In the area around Corry there are a large number of talented machinists and of them there are a few who have extensive knowledge in the workings of vintage steam and gas engines. One such man has been a volunteer helping us analyze the parts and pieces which have been disassembled for many years. Some of those parts have had work done to them and some have not. A couple of parts were missing, but we had enough information and measurement that we could machine new ones.

So in late October we took advantage of a beautiful Fall day to load the engines on to Norm’s flatbed trailer, tie it down, pack up a few totes full of parts and haul it all to our Machinist Friend, and Volunteer, Bill’s shop.

From there the engine will be disassembled and inspected. Bill, with Norm alongside, will be making and acquiring some new parts, making new gaskets and adding new packing and wool-waste for the oiling reservoirs, making sure all clearances are proper, adjusting as necessary… and then final assembly and adjustment will take place.

Since then, much of this has already happened. Bill discovered a few things which indicated that communication between Keith and his machinist wasn’t the best. The work that was done WAS well done… BUT… from the looks of it, the machinist just did what he was told to do and had no input into the project… meaning that the machinist may not have been an “old engine guy” and wasn’t anticipating what Keith was ultimately wanting to have happen… which when final assembly would have begun, some major problems would have reared their collective heads and several things would have had to have been redone. I won’t get into it deeper here, but Bill believes that we have caught all of those issues.

The bores of the cylinders were very straight… very slight taper… cross-hatch honing patterns are still on the cylinder walls right from the Climax factory in 1902, indicating extremely low mileage on the engine and drive-line. There are a few small detail parts that Bill is having made…. just because… and at this point we are waiting for new Piston Rings coming from Niagara Piston Rings, just across the State-line in Clymer, NY… their shop was here in Corry at one time but is now actually located in Panama, NY, just 17 miles away… so, in a few weeks Bill will start the final assembly followed by testing under air…

Come Spring we will bring it back to the shop and it will be here for folks to see as it awaits the reconstruction of the frame and trucks. Stay tuned!!!