Work Day September 7, 2004

The big project for today was to improve our ballast loading facilities.  Up until now we have been loading ballast cars from a pile of ballast located next to the track.  Sometimes having to operate the tractor front-end loader on a slope.  It was time for a change ...

Hidden away in the trees was a neglected item that I had been lead to believe was ready for the scrap heap.  While doing some cleanup before the July show we dragged it out.  It was basically a large funnel on legs with a sliding door on the bottom.  It looked to be in workable condition and, after some minor repair we discovered that it worked great.

We tried it over the mainline on a couple of work days and it worked so well that we decided that it needed a siding of it's own (since it had to be removed for us to use the mainline for normal running).

I picked up Larry Engel and his Bobcat at 7:15 AM and we headed for the track where we were met by Larry Blecha.  By 6:30 PM we had accomplished this (click on photos for a larger version):

Hopper mounted on it's new permanent home.  The angle iron rail section below it is from our old loading ramp.  Since the edge of the angle iron is pointing up, excess ballast can't sit on the rails and derail the ballast cars.  Yet to be built is the support for the outer end and possibly an extension to allow loading of multiple ballast cars at once.

Here I am back filling the tie walls and preparing the grade for the track to the hopper.  The tie walls will make it much easier to scoop up the ballast.  In the past we didn't have anything to backstop the pile.

We built up the grade to the hopper and placed rail panels ready to be connected to the switch (still to be cut in).  The Northeast leg of the North wye is in the foreground.

After a long day Chuck (me), Larry Blecha, and Larry Engel pose in front of our creation.

It will now be much easier to load ballast into the ballast cars.  We'll endeavor to keep the hopper full so that small ballasting jobs can be done without getting the tractor out.

We also had time to:

... level the remainder of the new yard area and lay panels ready to be joined - hopefully in time for the September 18th meet!  Larry groomed the open yard area and the slope beyond with a 'gill' on his Bobcat so that the ground is ready for grass seed.

When I left the house in the morning the sun was just coming up over the horizon.  When I got home the sun was just setting.  A long day but we felt that we had accomplished a lot ...