Progress on Locomotive 23 as of  February, 2002:

Progress on Locomotive 23 has been happening over the past 10 months or so since the last writing. There were a few diversions along the way. Notably, the Steam Team has gone up to Phoenicia for various jobs. Notably, the Steam Team finished mechanical repairs to Catskill Mountain RR Locomotive Number 1, aka: "The Duck". The Duck was in bad shape- it had eaten a load of ball bearings in its transmission and chewed the bearings and journals on its front axle. We redesigned a new front axle and had it built by an old time machine shop. We also reverse engineered the guts of the transmission and got it back together. It was a close race to finish the Duck and get it running to pull ESRM's Christmas train for the public. The race was a squeaker with a final surprise- some low life had gone and stolen a brake beam from the parts piled up from the Duck. We fabricated a new brake beam at a dead run and got the little locomotive up and running. Then, there was work on Catskill Mountain RR's locomotive 29 to start the 2001 season.

Intermittently, Steam Team members also worked on the restoration of the passenger coach up at Phoenicia. When all else failed, there were a few weekends where various members were off running Susquehanna's steam locomotive 142 down in New Jersey. But, work on 23 did continue. It is kind of like watching a house get built. A new homesite looks like a muddy field, a hole in the ground and a heap of materials- things seems to take forever and all of a sudden, the rough frame and shell of a house appear. Perhaps it will be that way with the restoration of locomotive 23. This is a project which started "behind the eight ball"- no shop, no equipment, a few tools and a few volunteers. In order to get into the game, the volunteers had to come out from behind the eight ball and establish a "shop".

We now have a machine shop;"what's a machine shop?" We thought we were pretty well equipped with Earl's crane, and the 16" engine lathe and the big Brown and Sharpe milling machine. Thanks to the generosity of a friend with an old-time machine shop it suddenly seemed to be raining machine tools. We now have a 24" Niles vertical boring mill. This is a vintage 1920 machine tool in good running condition. Just the thing to remachine steam locomotive drive boxes and tender brasses on. We also have a second lathe, a "War Production Board" Monarch 18" swing x 72" engine lathe. This is a lathe we could machine an axle or piston rod upon if we had to. Both machines are now in the boxcar shop. Some deft trucking and rigging by The Great Pardini got them in there. Along the way, we also got a surface grinder donated to us. This is a precision grinder and may well wind up grinding valve plates, hardened steel shims and similar work. We are also going to put in a big Cincinnati horizontal milling machine- vintage 1930's. A geared head monster upon which we will be able to remachine the shoes and wedges for 23's running gear. The shop is kind of a cross between the machine shop in the engine room on a large Naval vessel, Fibber McGee's closet, and some portions of a 1930's railroad backshop. We were hanging on an old woodstove to heat our machine shop.

This was OK, and did make the boxcar habitable. However, on a cold winter Sunday, by the time the woodstove got the machinery warm enough to work on, it was almost time to go home. Brian Mason, a tool and die maker by profession, joined forces with his son Dave to work in our machine shop on the 23 Project. Brian donated an oil-fired hot-air furnace to the shop. Now, we can warm the shop up a day ahead of time so the machine tools will be ready to work. We are talking about geared head machine tools weighing a few tons apiece- a lot of cold iron and stiff gear lube otherwise. About all we lack is a couple of drill presses- but we are running out of room in the boxcar. When the Steam Team wasn't off dragging home machine tools or shoehorning them into the boxcar, they did get some work done on 23.

The tender frame has now been repaired, strengthened and lengthened. New heavy structural steel was spliced in using riveted splices. As the Steam Team got more proficient at hot riveting, they moved into riveting the braces back into the frame and finally riveted the drawbar pocket back in. The centerpot casting, which the truck bears against, had taken a beating between corrosion and wear. It was a pleasure to be able to put the casting up on the big Brown and Sharpe milling machine and cut it flat and true. Joe Michaels had picked up a big carbide face mill cutter for days like this. Dave Mason and the Brown and Sharpe made short work of that job. With the casting remachined, it was then re-riveted back into the tender frame. Mac MacCreery and his forge blower got the rivets hot and the crew drove them home. The tender frame being back together, it was time to focus on the tender trucks. These are old style "arch bar" trucks. One had been wracked in a derailment of 23 years earlier in the Upper Peninsula. Years of firemen hosing down the coal pile, overfilling the tank at the waterspout or just plain rainwater or snowmelt leaching through the coal pile in the tender had also taken away a lot of steel from the structural members of the tender truck. The only thing to do was to take the trucks apart. Once this was done, a new crossmember was formed from 1" thick steel plate at Rothe Welding.

Charlie Rothe is equipped to bend heavy steel plate at his shop and we are fortunate to have him in close reach of this project. The bent members of the arch bar trucks had to be re-bent back to correct profile and match each other closely. Thanks to the New York Power Authority for the loan of one BIG rosebud heating torch, this was accomplished. Once again, The Great Pardini used backwoods engineering- a track jack and a hunk of chain- to hold and form the red-hot arch bars back to correct geometry. ordinarily, this is a job for a blacksmith shop with a big cast-iron bending "slab" and possibly a hydraulic press. But, with some imagination, the job was done right in the yard. The tender trucks are not long from going back together.