About 1/3 of the tubes and flues have been removed thanks to the efforts of Brian Fansleau and Hannah Miller from Maine Locomotive & Machine Works. Our volunteers worked this weekend to move the tubes and flues into storage, so work can continue. These will be stored outside off the ground on some cribbing. So far there is pretty minimal corrosion evident! Leverett also begin the job of tallying up the boiler stud mounts and accounting for various brackets. It looks like every bracket stud on the boiler will be replaced. There are a lot of them...

Bob laid out and plasma cut the final and largest riveting access panel in the tender. It took three people to lift it out! With this panel access, we can now have access for the final water connection flange work.

Bob and Paul set up the cab wall spacer arch plate to plasma cut a narrow strip from it to permit a proper fit. This was cleaned up and clamped to the new cab wall. Jim and Alex used this as a guide to drill the next succession of rivet holes through the new cab wall.

Additionally, some shop clean up and rearrangement had to take place. First, the fabrication table had to get it out from under the cab. It was turned it sideways in front of the cab, so there is room to work on the front wall. Also, the stoker motor, in its storage crate, was taken to building 1 for winter storage.

There were some issues with the diesel air compressor throughout the work session. Leverett discovered the fuel pickup in the fuel tank was sucking air below 1/2 a tank. We will have to fix this, but at least we know when the tank is 1/2 empty now…..

Present were: Leverett, Bob, Paul VS, Jim Armstrong and Alex Fogg