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

Saturday, March 13, 1999

"Our Gang", an update from Daniel Price

We started this weekend by trying to get one of the rails of the switch into alignment. We were, however, unable to get everything kink free. It turned out that the existing rails to the east of the switch were about 2" to 3" too narrow. This required us to dig up part of the pedestrian crossing and use a track jack to force the rails back into place. They were then spiked and we were able to successfully line the necessary rail.

To dig up the pedestrian crossing we had to remove the city's temporary wood crossing and a significant amount of ballast. At the suggestion of Andy Evans, we decided to replace the wood crossing by temporarily installing some of the Omni rubber crossing material. This was placed between one of the rails and the concrete pedestrian walkway and the remaining gaps were filled with ballast. We will not be able to bolt the Omni material down in the near future as this will require rehabilitating (NOT Rebuilding) under the crossing as well as cutting the Omni material to fit in the switch.

Daniel Price

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