On Saturday, March 23, volunteers Dwight Maxey, Colin Mellin, Kendall Crouch, Bruce Davis, Dannis Hudson and Paul Brown worked to get Engine 104 started and checked out for next weekend’s event. After setting up the jump batteries, and following Dwight’s work to charge those batteries several times earlier in the week, we had a successful start on the locomotive. While waiting for the engine to warm up, the group worked to remove batteries from Engine 103. We are in the process of replacing batteries on engine 104 and two of the batteries on Engine 103 are pretty new and will be used as part of the replacement set. Engine 103 will be out of service for an undetermined time, so it was best to remove all the batteries for now. The group then moved Engine 103 onto another of the shop tracks to keep it out of the way for future operations this season.
The crew took a quick lunch break, and then got back to work cleaning up the batteries that we scattered all over, and then did some minor work on Engine 104, including replacing a brake shoe on the number 3 axle and working on the bell. Then we spent some time running the train set around on our running track and checking out equipment operation.
I have included a few pictures of today’s work.
– Paul
