Restoration Notes: A Day in the Life of a Railway Museum.

Saturday, February 27, 1999

Carburetors and Track Bolts, an update from Daniel Price and Greg Ramsey

This weekend I arrived at Travel Town at about 1:30PM. Andy Evans and Jim Fontenot had both been tightening bolts on the switch and adding jointer bars to the one joint that we couldn't get attached last week. That afternoon Jeff Barrow, Darlene Sexton, Steve DeVorkin, and myself worked on moving ties into alignment, while Jim continued to work on the last pair of jointer bars. Then Darlene got the skiploader and burro tongs and, with the help of everyone above, plus Chris Rippy and Brian Moore, the last piece of rail was moved into place and bolted. It now looks like a switch. Hopefully we will be able to start spiking in two weeks. J . Daniel Price.

.... continued by Greg Ramsey
And on the mechanical front, I scheduled my self to finally do the oil change on Charley. Unfortunately, when I arrived, Charley was already running, and Bryan Moore was setting up to finish Darlene Sexton's brakeman training.

So I turned my attention to the air compressor trailer that Danny had complained about last weekend ago. Sure enough there was gasoline flowing out the carburetor bowl vent when it ran. My extensive knowledge of internal combustion engines allowed me to quickly deduce that the float valve wasn't seating. (Ok, ok. Any high school autoshop student could have figured it out) I popped the top of it off and sure enough, just like the track drill, the bowl had a fair amount of sand in it. Of course, considering the environment we work in, I'm surprised we haven't had this trouble before.

I decided to just have the carburetor rebuilt, but had Andy Evans pick me up a fuel and oil filter while he was out so I could change them and the oil. Just before lunch, Bryan Reese released Charley back to me, and I started draining its oil. After lunch, I changed the filters and refilled it with fresh oil.

In the Motorcar, Bryan, continued his fine tuning of the Winton engine. We are still only getting about 2 full revolutions on air before the starting air balances out the engine's compression and internal friction. Bryan decided to try cranking it on air while still running the prelube pump. Up until now, we had separated the steps. But we still couldn't get continuos spinning.

Brad Sloser finished the reassembling of the dump truck's brakes so that it not only goes, it now stops. He still has some more minor adjustments and safety issues to deal with, but my hat (greasy as it is) goes off to him for stepping up to the plate and finishing this dirty job.

And if no one else has mentioned it, the contractor has finished the repaving of the miniature train crossing in service yard area. It would appear that all the major construction for the entrance project has been completed.

On the tail track front, the drilling rig is completely gone, and the MW folks have completed the cleanup of the balance of the debris. Almost looks like one big empty area. Now we need to start thinking about putting some stuff in there.

I decided to bail out about 4:30PM so I could drop off the carburetor. Chris Rippy was also on scene now, preparing to move Charley back up the grade crossing to supply air to the track folks.

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Copyright (c)1999. The Southern California Scenic Railway Association Inc.