Last Days

Lots to talk about in this final installment of Virginia City Summer! First we had a killer of a windstorm that played havoc with the place. Quarter size hail damaged every car parked in Nevada City; glad I was parked in Virginia City that day! The wind and hail broke 30 some windows in NC, a repair task that I didn’t have to do than god. The worst part of the wind was this poor bastard who got permanently blinded when a sign was ripped out of the ground. The sign was 8 feet by 12 feet made up of 3 sheets of ¾ plywood. This guy was creeping along the shoulder of the road with his family waiting out the storm. With the wind and the hail visibility was nearly zero. Out of nowhere a 4x8 hunk of this sign came crashing through the front windshield of this truck driving the corner of it right into his face.


This is the sign, the corner drove through the trucks windshield and the rest of it flipped up over the roof and tore off. I picked it up nearly 50yds from the starting point.



On a lighter note my brother asked me about the work truck so I am tossing in this great picture.



It is a 1984 Chevy ½ ton. This bad boy uses the 4.3 V6 and a mushy automatic. Really gets up and sits there when you tromp on it. I don’t want to make it out to be all bad, it is a very environmentally friendly rig too! Most of the time it runs on 4cyl, calling on the 5th cyl when you get on the throttle a little bit. When you really need the power and stand on it that 6th cyl more or less just flops around in there someplace.


The last thing I did before leaving is talk the bosses into allowing me to build a display along the tracks. It seemed like such a waste of space, time and resources not to have some dioramas for people to look at while riding the train.

Before:



After:



I like the damn thing. I was given lots of support on the project from the ‘permanent’ staff. I could only use lumber in the junk/burn pile and it couldn’t interfere with my ‘assigned duties’. Knocked the thing out in 2 days with some polish time here and there in the mornings. The tourists loved it but certain individuals simply grumbled that it should have been built with solid rough-cut 2x6’s. These certain individuals were also the ones responsible for using only junk wood. I don’t think they thought it could be pulled off with scrap. Ha ha! See that big boy, that’s my ass, feel free to kiss it!

On the anal fornication note, good by! Tune back into the out-of-plumb blog to catch up on the latest house happenings.

Jeep

Went out to play in the Mud flats yesterday. Had a great time. The Jeep is so light and the tires are quite wide so we could go where no one else could, even some of the four wheelers. Lots of fun but I bet right about now someone hates me. They are going to look at my tracks and think if they did it so can I. No you can't!




It is quite funny out on the clay. Even in 2 wheel drive it lacks the HP to spin the tires. I am running around on the top of 30 feet of sticky clay gumbo and I can't even spin a doughnut. Pathetic. After we left we did some hill climbing, some of the slopes must have been in excess of 50 degrees so I guess that is something.

We were supposed to have good footage of pulling out on the road and shaking off the mud. You can see it sticking to the side of the tires in the pic. Some one pushed the wrong button so no footage. It was quite amusing, like driving between two brown waterfalls. If you have ever run in gumbo then got up to speed you will have an idea what it was like.



The dog has taken to sleeping on the stairs in the trailer. I think she misses the closed space of her kennel. The cone keeps her out you see. Doesn't look comfortable does it?

Catch up if you can!

Wow lots going on. The Dog in true form has taken a rather minor break and turned it into a months long ordeal. She chewed through her splint one night and licked and gnawed herself right down to the tendons. Oh but wait there is more! She then proceeded to bight the pad off the bottom of that foot.



We now have to drive up and over the hill to Ennis twice a week to have the wounds drained, cleaned, abraded, sterilized and packaged back up. She will be out of the splint long before she has healed up. My advice, BUY THE DAMN CONE FIRST NEXT TIME!

The family was up to do a little digging over our break. I think great fun was had by all. We were out at this location called the Lion's place.


It is the homesteaded sheep ranch of the Lion's brothers from the early teens. Great little stream running through the place, lots of Garnets to be had. My brother came with his (my?) brothers-in-law and they got some gopher shooting in prior to digging. The little guy had a blast.



Real neat slot canyon on the place, little waterfalls and pools with overhanging plants and cactus. It is called the rock garden by the people who own the land now.



Stopped and explored an old overland stage stop on the way back to camp. Didn't find much. Some old horseshoe nails and a shovel handle.


Rail News:
Several things going on.

One my little nephew got to sit in No. 8 to ring the bell and blow the whistle. Little boys and trains, made for each other.



The Nevada City Depot has little natural ventilation so I made some ornamental window screens to help. Painted to match the locomotives.





A rail crossing was also in need of repair. Dirt washed down from the road was filling the tracks in and the driving rods on the steam engine were just kissing the ground. I dug it all out, discovering in the process that one of the timbers was bad, removed and replaced it.



I have spent allot of time driving No. 8 as one of our engineers quit.
Action Video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6B07i3hRuw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrY1Fo7HmGc

The more time I spent in it the more the horrible growl from the trans axle bothered me. Before we pulled it offline it was making a rhythmic crunch. Normally we could work on the old girl while the steam engine is running but that is shut down due to fire danger. We cleaned up, repaired, rebuilt and assembled a spare trans axle only to find out in the moment of insertion that it is slightly different even if visually identical. We are running an 1 7/8 axle and the spare is 2 1/16. No big deal the mounts are the same, and the larger axle would be stronger except we only had one hub. Hard to drive a train with only one back wheel. We could (and did) order one but it would be 4 days before it arrived. Now it was going to get difficult. Canceling one of our trains for the day has a ripple effect through out the towns of Nevada and Virginia Cities. Lots of money is lost and not just by us. Pulling both of our trains offline for 5 days would be a very unpopular move.




We had a full set of gears for either axle and could rebuild the bad one real quick except for one issue, it was bent. Some time in the distant past something very bad happened and a 1/4 bow in a 36" axle was the result. Several misguided attempts were made with jacks and hammers before we hit upon the proper tool. It is called a Jim Crow (don't ask me why) and is used to bend railroad rail for curves. It was up to the task of straightening our axle. It is my new "must have one" thing for Christmas.



Well we did it, the 1/4 inch wobble was cut to 1/16. Sure you wouldn't want to take that out on the road but under a under a glorified speeder car traveling 6 MPH it was high cotton. She is back on the rails today after a down time of 1 1/2 days, whisper smooth.

Pirate Dog

The dog broke her leg. Well her toe to be specific. She dislocated it and snapped off part of the socket that holds the bone in place. Quite sad and pathetic but funny as hell to listen to her thump around on her splint. Arrgh! Pics will follow.

The Fourth, The Fires, The Smoke and The Jeep.

All sort of one and the same really. The old yellow girl has had a rough couple of weeks. I was on a very long, very steep downhill descent in low range and noticed at the bottom a wisp of smoke. By the time I made it back to town it was a pillar of momentous proportions. 11 miles later the smoke had died out some but was still puffing under acceleration and shifting. I did the Rislone treatment but that only seemed to make it worse. After it had sat for nearly a week I started it today and drove it to VC with no smoke that I could see. Maybe there was a delay in the treatment. Far as I can tell I have oil pouring down the valve stems. Not much that can be done now short of an overhaul. I have access to a big shop here and could do it but have decided not to unless something big dies in the motor. Using a qt of oil for every 10 gallons of gas. Guess that makes me a terrorist. To make it worse when I started it this morning it made it 100yds and died. The electric fuel pump quit. I was able to fix it, with a rock. Bang bang and we were off and running again.


We were in the fourth of July parade in Ennis. Dressed up as a miner and the missus was a prim and proper church girl. We set up a bar scene on a hay wagon and played poker with a pair of saloon girls while the church crew looked on in disapproval. The wagon was pulled by four Percheron horses, four abreast. Quite impressive, exciting too as on of the horses hadn't been in harness for a while due to injury and got the others excited. He was hopping his back feet whenever the team was asked to slow down and this hopping would detach him and his buddy from the wagon but not the other horses. Good fun. In the picture below the butt head is on the left side.




The fourth of July fireworks were great fun. We were able to go up to the Preservation shops and watch the fireworks from essentially ground zero. The launching would rattle your bones. Too bad they started so many fires... After that barn burned we never got to see the end of the show. I suppose that was nearly as much fun as the fireworks, provided it wasn't your barn.

I've Been Working on the Railroad

We had a little incident last Saturday, a derailment. Now that isn't all that uncommon for the little train, it is so small it can pop off. In fact we gathered up about 6 guys and lifter her back on, anyway the derailment wasn't the biggest concern, it was where. Little No. 8 came off on the bridge, towards the side with no railing or walk way. This was a situation that needed to be rectified and so that is where most of my work has been for the last 2 days.



What we did is grab some 10 foot switch ties and insert them in between the existing ties in the road bed. Some of them we were able to sling into place with the man lift, others were just put in by hand. We carried them over the bridge and slid them down the side of the embankment until the ends would slip in between.

Jack positioning a tie:


Sometimes we could then grunt them in and slide them trough but other times we had to lift the rails in order to make room.

Pulling spikes:


Lifting the Rail, notice the spike driven underneath:


When it was out over the water we tied a chain around the far end, slipped the near end in and then lifted up the back of the tie by hand with the chain. This is a tie jammed in between the rail and the bridge supports. We had to lift rail for this one.




Once in place we spiked them down.




Jack, Gean and I came back and finished it up yesterday. Set the last 4 ties hanging out over the water and put a deck on it. We will put a guard rail later.



This is the main reason for all of the work No.12



It was time for her shakedown cruse before starting an active summer. I got to go along. They had me working the switches, helping with the fueling and sanding the flues. The first 2 are self explanatory but the last one is sort of different. When they get her working hard up a grade you pour a gallon of sand into the firebox vent. The draft from the fire sucks it through the boiler tubes and out the stack. The purpose is to sand blast soot deposits.

This is the hill I sanded on:



Far as we know this is the steepest tourist railroad in operation still using steam, this grade is as bad a 6%.

The rest of what I did on No.2 will have to be told in person. Lets just just say the words "boyhood dream" and "plausible denyability" are both appropriate. After an 11 hour day we put her to bed. You can hear what the weariness and soot have done to my voice, but not much else.

Some Sage Advice

Some shots of what I do. I have some more exploration stuff but we can get to that later. Every Tuesday I select one of the more neglected nags from the stables and get her running again. Last week it was the 1956 Chevy fire truck this week it was the Ford Grain truck of similar vintage. Popped a battery in her, a little gas down the carburetor and off she went. Not surprising since I put a 12V battery in a 6V truck. Oops. Smoked the break lights the moment I stepped on them, same with the turn signals. I hope this was the extent of it since I was careful not to touch anything else electrical. I took her on the morning trash run (2 1/2 ton truck with 2 sacks of trash in the back) and opened her up some. It had been sitting so long all the tires had flat spots, bang bang bang, down the road we went. After that I proclaimed it "tree pruning day" and set about filling the truck with branches. This is a shot of it full of dead sage brush:


Filled it three times in all between Nevada and Virginia city. This is looking back away from where we dump it, not an interesting shot but one most visitors don't get to see. The tracks and building in the distance make up the Nevada city train barn.


This last picture sort of sums up what we have been doing, mowing. This is, as far as I know, the last field of grass we needed to get to. If you look closely you can see the lawn mower in the grass. No trickery here, the mower isn't in a hole and I am not crouching down. In case you are curious about scale that is a 25 horse mower that cuts a 5 foot swath of grass. Quite a beast but a blast to drive.

Belle Mine (I think)

Stuff came up so I will not have time to update in detail much this week. Here are some snaps from what we think is the Belle Mine.

These are the main buildings 'shanties'. As you can see it was worked not to long ago, 50' or 60's.



These shots are for the placer dig below the Belle Mine. They are obviously hand dug and stacked. When the dredges did it they left wavy lines like over lapping scales.



Garnets in matrix at the placer.


Very small shaft of unknown depth down below the mine on the placer level.



Upper and more modern level of the mine. Looks like it was worked in the 80's or later. I assume the shaft was blown shut because the tailing's indicate a much deeper mine.

First Day Exploration

I just took these while wandering up Granite Draw. More of my explorations will follow with better information on location and what I was after. This is just me messing around.





Future posts will cover abandoned mines and the various aspects of my summer employment. This Saturday I am back on and they will be running the Steam train. I am planing on being available for track maintenance so I hope to have video or pictures of that. I don't think anyone but myself who reads these has a slow internet connection so I will try to include more videos.

Getting There is Half the FUN

I decided that it would be a lot of fun to have the Jeep in Virginia City this summer. Pulling it out of Mom & Dad's place and getting it running was difficult but not beyond my reach. Had to install all new wheel cylinders and replace the steering with something from a Dodge Dump truck (it was all I had handy). Without going into the details it was operational by the time I needed. I documented the journey because I know both family and friends did not think it would arrive as planned.



Note the steering wheel slop in the next video, I think in the future I should check to see if the steering I am swapping in is NOT all worn out first.



Outside Rock Creek I pulled over to take a break and let the Dog wee. By this time I was on the Interstate. This added a new stress to the adventure as I was being overtaken at speeds of 30MPH or more. Each time a truck would pass I would get this surge forward and then it would try and suck the Jeep in. Gas gauge was on its way out by this point.



We made it! By this time I had already unloaded all of the stuff out of the old girl and wandered on up the road a ways. The tires are both far better and far worse than they look. Those tires are older than I am. In fact in the scrap book there is a picture of me as an infant and in the background you can see my uncles old Jeep with those very same tires on it. The fact that they made it all the way back around to me bolted onto a different Jeep long after the original was gone is a story in itself. I decided it was fate and if they had lasted this long then by God they will last this summer. So far so good!