High Iron

A blog about volunteering on a railroad in Berkeley

Friday, August 04, 2006

Driving a locomotive for the first time

Today I helped Ellen and Grant rework some of the track leading into the shop. There's a fairly tight curve that leads into a raised grade. In the shop, there's a bench topped with rail that's about 3 feet high, which allows locomotives and cars to be worked on at a comfortable height. So one can imagine that the track eventually leaves the grade, over a wooden retaining wall, and across a short linkage track to the work bench. You can see the benchwork (but not the retaining wall) in the first photo in a previous post. Anyway, the track has worked its way out of shape over time, and apparently on monday a car nearly went "on the ground" (i.e., derailed).

So today we reworked about a 25' section of track. We used a clever device called a gantry to get the track leveled. The gantry is like a 7 foot wide metal sawhorse. Dangling from the crosspiece of the sawhorse are two long screws with clamps at the bottom. By attaching the clamps to the rail and turning the two screws, you can raise the two rails to the correct height. Using an old sight level (to check the overall level of the track compared to a survey of the track) and a beam level (to check the level between the two rails), you can set the rails in the right place and then tamp the ballast into place beneath, which effectively locks the ties and the rails in place. We finished off with some reinforcing work on the wooden wall reinforcing the edge of the grade (I wish I'd brought my camera).

Grant and I then ran the work train back down to Barn #1, which is where the work cars live. We followed Ray out, who was running the passengers 'round behind #5 "Fern" who is back out of the shop with new steamchest valves. As Ray headed off down the race track, we slipped into a siding that took us down to Barn #1. At this point Grant let me take over at the controls to #2. #2 is the one which got the new carb a few posts back, and I got to have a go with switching duties on it. There's, basically, one lever that controls the throttle, and one that operates as a clutch. After dropping off the work train in the barn, I then ran back up to the mainline, waited for the inbound passenger train to pass, and followed it in for the switch into the roundhouse.

So, it was brief, but I was an engineer today! Gotta get a few photos tomorrow...

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