Rainy Day Blues

The picture above says it all, I think: yesterday was not a good day for outdoor activities of any sort, including photography.  We had a few brave visitors, and many trains running.  And it never rained hard enough to cause real flooding.  The wood CA&E cars and the IT heavyweight train were cancelled, and instead we had the wood L cars and the 101.  

Here we are during a break in the rain.

However, in the afternoon Bob Sundelin came by and asked me if I wanted to help with the 309 bearing project.  Do I!  With only a few passengers, the Buck brothers were more than able to handle the train themselves, so I followed Bob over to the shop.   Here he is carefully leveling the lower casting inside the big oven. 

Then solder paste is carefully applied to the joint:

And the two halves are carefully aligned and clamped.  In the front on the left is Bob's thermocouple, to measure the actual temperature of the casting.   The temperature gauge on the oven is not very accurate, and in any case measures the temperature of the air, not the heavy casting.

Then we close the door, turn on the oven, and wait for the gauge to creep up to its set point:

Once the casting has exceeded the solder's melting point, and those in the know say that it smells like the solder has indeed melted, we turn off the oven, turn on the exhaust fan, and let it cool down enough to open the door.  It certainly looks like the solder has melted, and the casting itself has changed color, but it's still way too hot to handle.  In any case, this is exciting progress on the bearing project, and now we should be able to start machining out the bearing surfaces.   Watch this space for the results!

Finally, we also had visitors, including my granddaughter Vivian, on her first visit to IRM:

Frank adds...

We'd hoped that Vivian's first train ride would be on the CA&E, but the CSL is a solid second in my book of favorite electric railways so we went for a trip on the Matchbox. I suspect the length of the voyage was more to her liking as well. And of course we can't miss a visit to Grandpa, doing his best to class up the atmosphere in the car shop.