A very productive day in and around the engine house today as many showed up to tackle various projects. Those who came to help out today were: Joe and Jay Monty, Bob Dewachter, Hans Brandes, Bill Piche, Kyle Collins, Tim Jones, Colby Miles, Hansel Fardon and Dakota Dumont. Wow, that’s a good crew!
We continued on our primary project of staybolt removal on #4. At our last work session were were able to remove 3 stays. This time we were able to do even better and get 4 more out and started prepping 7 more. It is not easy to do this as it requires drilling multiple times and grinding. The drilling requires quite a bit of elbow grease and must be done from both inside the firebox and out. It’s a noisy dirty job. Joe, Hans, Bill, Colby, Dakota and Hansel all helped out with this. Doing this ourselves will save thousands of dollars.
In the mean time, Jay worked on the valve packing. New packing material will be ordered so that this task can be completed.
Bob and others were able to move the old #7 water tank. This now makes for a clearer path for getting the office trailer removed. Bob also did some further measuring to see if #8 is going to fit in the museum. It is very close and will know more once a contracting company visits us and gives us their opinion on the feasibility and cost of moving #8.
At lunch time we had a group talk to bring everyone up to speed on things going on around the museum (relocation, Guest Engineer, #8 move, etc.) Everyone is very excited about steam running in 2012 and the Guest Engineer program. Look for the program to be on the MNGRR website in the next week or so.
Our next work session will be on Saturday, February 25 though staybolt work may continue on the 18th if there is any interest. The sooner we can finish the stay preparation on #4 the sooner we can get back to work on #7.
