[PRCo] Weakly Report July 26, 2004

[James B. Holland]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Weakly Report July 26, 2004
Date: 	Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:49:33 -0400
From: 	CuZinBruce
	



Weakly Report
7/26/04

It was a very productive weekend in the shop. In fact it has been a very 
productive couple of months! The lack of time to sit down and type up 
the news has kept me from sending all of you a written report and I will 
not attempt to recount everything that has been going on at the museum. 
I have been posting photos to my website and releasing briefs and the 
counters show me that a number of folks have taken a look. As a reminder 
the basic site can be accessed from:

homepage.mac.com/cuzinbrucie

 >From there you can click on any of the Weakly Report pages and see the 
progress of the "Big Move" and many things that have happened around the 
Trolley Farm this past year. I have also placed this report on a page 
there in case you know someone who would be interested in the reading 
part and don't feel like forwarding the text, which is sometimes hard to 
read. For a complete accounting of the BM effort you will be able to 
read the report by Dave Hamley in an upcoming issue of Trolley Fare, the 
PTM newsletter. If you are not a member and would like to read all about 
it why not join PTM?
Learn how at:
http://pa-trolley.org/joinptm.htm

This weekend in the shop we cleaned up "skid row". If you look at my 
website you can view the pictures of what the storage tracks in the shop 
looked like after the cars were removed. Our plan is to take a section 
of that opened up space and pave it to allow laydown area for the work 
on Pittsburgh 4398 and passage for our forklifts. The area will be wider 
in the back of the building next to 4398 and we are currently soliciting 
donations to offset the $10000 cost.

The clean up work featured a cast of many. First of all Scott Becker 
engineered the donation of a 30 yd dumpster from our friends at the 
local dump before he left for vacation. The dumpster was delivered on 
Tuesday and after getting it placed in the right place (much to the 
relief of Lynn Caffrey) we began by collecting together tarp scraps and 
placing them inside. I worked a couple of nights during the week after 
completing work on the Wells Family chateau construction project up the 
road past the County Health Center. Dennis Buckley helped out on 
Wednesday night by bringing back the scraps remaining at the Blimp 
Hangar plus retrieving and folding tarps remaining along County Home 
siding. Thursday night I carried a lot of the unrelated (to trolleys) 
junk up to the dumpster from the shop and piled it up for the weekend.

On Saturday morning Larry Lovejoy started the effort at the crack of 
dawn while Sarah, Laura and I stayed over Friday night at the Blimp 
Hangar. We got up at 5:45 and had breakfast before taking Sarah to her 
horse show at the Fairgrounds and then joining the effort with Larry. 
The first step was to finish uncovering the former track 5 and decide 
what between keep and throw out as well as metal and non metal. Bernie 
Orient joined the effort and got the burn pile going back behind Barn 1. 
Along the way Jeff King, Dave Hamley, Dennis Bockus, Scott Davis, and 
Bob Jordan joined the effort and things shifted into high gear.

When Dan Bower got there the heavy equipment began to roll. Alberto 
Almarza joined the group and the first order of business was to pull the 
rails out of the building using the Euclid loader. The rails were then 
taken apart and loaded onto M283 for removal to the east site. The 
Euclid was used next to remove the ties. When that was completed Dan 
tipped the bucket up and scraped the area smooth and Steven Chase joined 
Laura, Daryl Harps, Jeff, Dennis and I in completing the clean up. We 
moved and sorted parts, cabinets, blocking, debris, etc from its 25 year 
resting places to somewhere out of the way for the next phase which will 
be paving.

During all the excitement Justin Skrbin and Jack Sutherland continued 
the work on 4398. Justin is currently fabricating new sheet-metal boxes 
for the bench seat heaters. The original ones somehow became completely 
rusted out during the car's years of operation in Pittsburgh. Justin 
modified them with a new design to accept the modern heating elements 
which will be used in the rebuilding while Jack occupied himself with 
sandblasting and painting the components original heater enclosures. All 
of the parts done so far are looking great. Jack has taken on the task 
of refurbishing worn parts on the sandblaster. This has allowed all our 
sandblasting gang to become more productive.

Outside along the line the cleanup continued with more scrap ties being 
picked up with the crane car and deposited into the dumpster. Bill 
Fronczek added to the crew for this effort and by days end the dumpster 
had been filled to the brim. We capped off the evening with a great 
cookout and rides on Red Arrow 66 as we enjoyed the evening sun and the 
cool temperatures that we were blessed with on Saturday.

Sunday, Bernie continued the work in the shop by replacing the walkway 
across the track to the visitor center door.

That's all I have for now. The humidity returned Sunday and it's been 
raining all day today. Tomorrow the wood for the house is supposed to 
come so the fun should kick into high gear any moment now for the 
Wellzes.     As always, keep smilin', stay safe and questions are welcome.

CuZinBruce