There’s a work session scheduled for September 9th starting at 10:00 AM and ending at 5:00 PM.
All volunteers are welcome.
Tasks to include marking parts and moving them to proper storage areas, and “buttoning up” the cab to ready it for the end of the work season.
Hello #9 fans. Fletcher’s crew will be having a couple volunteer sessions on our beloved locomotive this month.
Our first session will be tomorrow, Wednesday Aug 9. We have a small crew that will continue working on freeing the cab from the locomotive. Our next session will be Saturday, August 19 starting at 10am. We should have a larger crew that day, and pickup where we left off from July. We hope you can make it, and thank you for your continued support!
Update provided by Jason Reiman.
“Even though the rain this last week Wednesday kept us inside, it worked out well because the work we needed to do, was inside.
Our Mid-Week volunteer session focused completely on the #9’s tender again, but this time we were finishing up the great paint job she got last year. Chris Burdick joined us to help mix up the paint and hardener, and we set the young ones loose to finish up the coal space on the Tender. Fletcher was joined by his youngest cousin, Carter Reiman, and they both slung some brushes to paint the coal space by hand. They had a good time, and many laughs. I was amazed at the difference in the look of the coal tender by simply hand painting it.
Other tasks we completed included sealing up the top lip of the tender with caulk, and we again took a closer look at the pilot for future restoration.
A big THANK YOU to Chirs Burdick for setting Fletch and Carter up with the paint, and another big THANK YOU to the operations crew for getting the tender inside the Coach Shed last week. There is no way we could have completed this job if the tender had not been spotted indoors. Especially with all the rain we received.
Please keep an eye out for our next work session, I will post it as soon as we have picked a date.“
Join Fletch and his crew for a mid-week volunteer session on the D&R #9! They will be getting together on Wednesday 7/12, at 10am, to continue plugging away on the #9. Please join if you can.
May 20, 2023; We had a small crew this last Saturday, and the list of tasks we completed on the #9 was small, BUT, what we did accomplish laid the ground work for huge projects in the future.
During our April planning session, Fletcher’s team decided that this year we will focus our efforts on the #9’s Cab. Although we will continue to work on other areas, this will be the “Year of the Cab”. With that strategic goal set, we made our first significant moves on the cab by removing the deck plate. It will be stored and prepared for future restoration.
Next, we focused on the cab itself. Like a politician running for president, we have flip-flopped back and forth on the floorboards in the Cab. Should we replace the floorboards, or should we not replace the floorboards? We have discussed this issue almost since day 1. This would not be a simple task as the entire cab of the #9 would need to be raised to remove and replace the floorboards. On the flip side, the floorboards in the cab are in better shape than the rest of the wood on the locomotive, so should we leave them for future restoration? So, we debated this to no end, and recently came to the conclusion that we will in fact replace the floorboards.
So, after the deck plate, we started removing the many, many nuts/bolts that were holding the cab to the locomotive. This was a tedious task, that was much like an Easter Egg hunt. Where is the next bolt? Is it here, is it there? Some came off very easy, some came off with WD-40, and some had to be coerced with a Sawzall. We removed all bolts under the Fireman’s side, and all bolts on the front of the Engineer’s side. This allowed us to remove 1 of the floorboards from under the fireman’s side, before we wrapped up for the day.
Fletcher was a big help with this task and was able to squeeze in some small spaces some of us couldn’t. I also want to thank Larry Stanley for lending a hand with his tools for some of the more stubborn bolts. Also, a big thank you to Steve Pahl and Jay Slinde as usual.
Please keep an eye out for our June work session, I will post it as soon as we have picked a date.
