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!