Father's Day Part II

Frank writes...

As alluded to earlier, I got out to IRM on Sunday about lunchtime to discover that the 308 and 319 had been pulled out of the barn but quickly put back in due to some issues with the reverser on the 308. Thanks to the crew of Bob Opal and Jeff Obarek, who had correctly diagnosed the problem, it didn't take long to narrow down the issue. A quick call to my father suggested a fix and after a bit of adjustment the reverser was working like clockwork again. So I pulled the train out of the barn and took it up to the station where it was swapped into service in place of the steel train, 409 and 460.

Here's the meet at Wheaton, er, East Union as the steel train returns from its trip with the wood train already in Station Track One. Pretty neat, eh? If you like this like I like this, you won't want to miss July 2nd, when we'll be reenacting the abandonment of passenger service in 1957.

The weather was gorgeous and it seemed like we had a good crowd. Scenes like the shot above, with a mob of passengers getting ready to board the steam train, are always a good thing!

The crew in the car shop had mostly been working on some repairs to the Army 45-ton diesel, but by the time I got done with this project - and went for a nice relaxing ride on the 308 - they had moved onto better and more electric things. I helped a bit with some air brake work that needed doing. The first task was to clean up one of the motorman's brake valves on CSL 144, which had been kind of tight. Above, Richard Schauer works on reassembling and lubricating this. (Note that next to him is a main bearing from the 251 - see last week's post.) The other task was to clean the feed valve from CA&E 460, which had been acting up a little. Joel and Richard worked on this job and Joel also reinstalled the 144 brake valve and the 460's feed valve. All in a day's work.

And finally, a quiz for you out there in cyberspace: can you name this sprightly chap posing on our own Charles City Western 300 back in the 1950s? The winner gets a free hot dog from the diner!