Work Session Status Week Ending 08/10/2019

August 13, 2019

As most of you know we steamed up the 2926 for the second time Monday a week ago, July 29th. Matt Casford came in from San Antonio, TX to be our official fireman as he is a member of NMSL&RHS.

The steam up went according to schedule until the 290# PRV (Pressure Relief Valve) released at 265#. Attempts were made to adjust the valve, but it would not respond. While under steam we tested the injector, one dynamo and both air pumps. All worked fine.

The following Wednesday all three PRV’s were disassembled and the springs sent back to California for further analysis, which is where they were redone in the first place.

Since then we have been working on insulation and jacketing, improving the forge equipment and more electrical work.

Various infrastructure jobs and maintenance work seems to be never ending.

Much of the installed conduit has been painted shiny black which blends in nicely with the other parts of the locomotive.

A new arrival was the long awaited MU control box. John H., the designer, hand carried it from California on Amtrak. Check out the website in the coming days for photos showing his engineering expertise. It’s really nice work! Thank you John.

As many of you have heard, our eastern track towards the mainline is in desperate need of replacement. NMDOT uses Herzog to do this work. We received a price from them a couple weeks ago and it came to, in round numbers, $30K. There are photos on the website or Instagram of that track in horrible condition. They would normally only put Class 1 track in there, but due to the heaviness of the 2926 and tender than what she was when she was rolled in there in 2002 as a rust bucket and empty, they want us to upgrade the track to Class 2 quality. We’ve had many generous donations already.

Even though we don’t have a separate encumbered cash set up for the track, you can still make you donation and mark track work on it and it will go towards that from our General Fund in the bank. Thanks to those that have already given and hope there will be many more coming in. We couldn’t do it without you for sure.

Hope to see everyone that can make it to the site this week. It’s still pretty hot out there, so sunscreen and hydration is necessary for sure and cooling down in the offices.

Keep on Steamin’,
Rick & Gail Kirby, CMO & Secretary
NMSL&RHS