High Iron

A blog about volunteering on a railroad in Berkeley

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Finished a retaining wall, and ran around on locos

I left my jacket up at the shop yesterday, so I figured it was a good enough excuse to put in 4 hours or so at the railroad.

In yesterday's post I mentioned the work we'd done on the track running into the shop. Today we finished up the retaining wall, through-bolting the rail plate into the top of the wall and then filling it in with ballast. More tamping! We do a lot of tamping on this railroad, which is hard work, but it's so satisfying to ride over newly leveled and tamped track.

While getting the shop spur finished up, Ray had been steaming up #4 which had been in the shop when the track work had started. As we put away the tools (and headed in for a bowl of ice cream), Ray and Paul fired up #4 for a run. Oil-fired locomotives like ours can get soot building up in their flues, so when first steaming up you sometimes need to sandblast them To do this, you work the locomotive really hard, generating maximum draft from the firebox through to the smokestack, and then you drop in a little sand, which blasts through the flues. For a good description of the parts of a boiler, have a look at this page by Tim Overton.

I headed down just in time to see the #4 couple up to the #7 which was heading the passenger trains today. We doubleheaded a passenger train, with me riding on #4's footplate next to Ray while Grant and Harrison drove #7 behind us. Paul is supposed to send me a photo or two later on.

Then it was time to put #4 away, but yesterday Grant and I had put away #2 "Juniper" in its place. Having heard that I'd run #2 yesterday, Ray and Paul agreed that I could run #2 back down to Barn 1 (in the back half of the track) and Ray would follow us in #4. We'd put "Juniper" away in the work barn, and then I'd catch a ride back up with Ray and Paul on "Laurel". So two days in a row now I got to drive a loco on the railroad.

And two days in a row I did a lot of work, and my back is a little sore, and I'm quite tired. Good night!

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