Report for Thursday 5 August to Sunday 8 August

Thursday, 5 August.

We had a long meeting of the volunteers in the section house. John Weir
briefed us on the plans for the upcoming Railway Festival on August 28
and 29. Anne will send out minutes of the meeting.

Tom Travis painted the ladder brackets and stantions second coat. He also
painted the new wood on a crank rod from the velocipede in the MWR that
Ross restored during the week.

Ross did more sorting in the archives.

Others were busy on site but I did not take notes. You should send me an
email each day about what you do and I will include it here.

Sunday, 8 August.
Anne and I met with Bob Moore to discuss the placement of fill that we may
receive over the next few weeks. Some of the site will need to be
cordoned off for safety reasons. Also some rail and ties at the switch
will have to be moved to make way for the trucks.

Doug K weed whacked down past the combine. There is a terrible mess in
the low area next to the combine track that we need to fill in soon. How
to clean this up will need input from everyone. Most of this was there
when we bought the property.
Doug also placed ties into pallet crates supplied by Bob Moore. We will
need to make more of these, pallets are behind the garden shed.

Ross was not in a good mood and his day got worse by the minute. First
he assembled the 4 ladder brackets and then moved them and the six
stantions into the combine car. Doug K helped with this.

I tried to get the Woodings railcar going. First I found the wire to the
fuel pump had no voltage, a jumper fixed this temporarily. The wiring in
that car is a shambles, there are loose, unterminated and cut wires
everywhere. With fuel it started but would not idle. Attempts to adjust
the carburator only led to skinned ankles jumping from inside the car to the
front before it died. I removed the carburaetor and will have it
rebuilt in Ottawa.

The door jam on the mens stall almost fell off, this repair required
a trip to the hardware for 5 inch long screws, drilling out the original
holes
and installing the new screws. I will have to drill another hole at the
bottom when I can find a drill.

I tried to replace the deck faucet in the upstairs kitchen, was thwarted
by the need for special pipe adapters. Next week maybe.

Al Westland was measuring for the final rails for the switch, He will
rent a saw on Thursday and we will get this done. He is looking for the
2 boxes of cutoff discs.

Brian was painting the herald on the left side of the tender.

Ross removed one of the broken tops from the model 417 caboose stoves
and tack welded it back together with special cast iron rod. The top has
been sand blasted and with some filler and paint will make a pattern for
casting 2 new ones which Ross will have made at a foundry and donate.

That is it for this week. Apologies if I missed some action.

Ross Robinson

Report from July 29 to August 1st

Once again this report is late.

Thursday Brian was seen painting the Canadian National herald gold
lettering on the station side of the 1112 tender.

Doug may have been working on the switch. Al was absent.

Ross with help from John Weir and his tractor and Carl's muscles moved 5
loads of stoves and teletypes to the house. We also moved some smaller
items such as the turbo generator from the 1112.

Friday we moved another 2 loads of TTY to the house and a trailer load
of stretchers and other small items. Ross then spent the afternoon
cleaning the corner of the express office and starting to sort the paper
goods. 2 work tables have been set up and the process of de-moulding the
paper goods has begun.

A new rear gate has been approved by the board, work will commence in
September. I will try and post a 3D drawing at the sign in table,
drawing courtesy of Anne's husband Neil White.

Brian finished the herald by painting in the red background. Looks terrific.

Brian and Doug pressure washed the wooden locomotive ready for staining.

Sunday, Tom Travis from the Hoosier Valley RR Museum in North Judson IN
dismantled the 4 new ladder brackets and applied the first coat of
yellow paint, and also to the six safety railing stantions.

Ross continued sorting in the express office.

Doug K and his son Anthony applied a coat of sealer/stain to the wooden
train locomotive, until they ran out of stain.

Rian M and Ross put 45 lb. felt paper and a ridge cap of old roll
roofing on the roof of the garden shed. This will buy us a bit of time
before installing the steel roofing. Ross would like to see a barge board
installed on the shed. We will have to move the pile of tie plates
beside the shed for safe access, we can make some more pallet crates for
these. Ross put the roofing material on the combine platform into the
car and 2 pails of roofing cement.

Apologies if I missed others working on site.

Ross Robinson

Report for Thursday July 22 thruTuesday July 27th.

First I should point out that the dates on most of the July reports
are incorrect. I failed to turn my office calendar to July from June.

Thursday was spent moving items out of the container to make room for
John Weir's tractor. It now barely fits inside. Several loads of wood
were moved to the shed, a lot of other stuff was relocated in the
container, the long ladders went to the shed. We moved the scaffolding
into the boxcar behind 1112, in the process we found 4 stoves that
belonged in the archives section of the house so these were moved with
the tractor. There is still a lot of organizing left to do in the
container and that boxcar. This took up nearly the whole day. Workers
were, John W and his tractor, Bill M, Brian K, Ross R, Al W.. William
Seabrooke and Tom Caine helped and then went off to clear up scrap
siding and cut down weeds behind the shed.

At the end of the day the 3 motorcars on the breeze way were moved to
the front and back platforms to make space for the model rail exhibit
to be held on Saturday.

Gee sorted thru the recently returned accessioning sheets. A bit more
work and they should all be in proper order, then we can enter the
basic
info into a database.

Anne and the students cleaned up the room in the tower of the station,
moved a filing cabinet full of photos across the hall into a storage
room. They plan to repaint this room.

On Saturday Doug K, Al W, John Weir and Rian M shifted the track at
the entrance to the shed over a few inches so that Car 23 will not rub
on the door post. On Sunday Doug was cleaning up the site.

On Tuesday Tony dumped a lot of concrete fill in the hole at the end
of the shed track so that we can extend it a few hundred feet for
switching cars out and into the shed. He also got the rails at the
switch cut. This is a major contribution to getting the switch
finished.
Maybe we will yet be able to roll 23 out at the Railfest.

During the week Ross fabricated an air distribution manifold for the
compressor and sand blasted the fan and water pump body. He is
searching
for parts to complete the re-building of the pump.

Noel White, Anne's husband has produced a beautiful set of iometric
drawings of the proposed rear gate, for presentation at the next board
meeting. If this is approved we will get at it as the existing gate is
falling apart and would be a waste of resources to replace it as is.

Hope I got the major items into this report.

Ross Robinson, with input from Doug, Tony and Brian.

Report for July 14 to 17, 2010.

Monday July 14th.

Anne put her horticultural skills to good use and cleaned up the flower
gardens at the station, removing a truck load of branches and trash. She
also trimmed the bushes. Bob Moore was weed wacking. At some point
during the week Tony made the pile of cuttings disappear.

Thursday, July 17

Anne started the day with a meeting to map out responsibilities for
festival preparations and for the two days of the event.

Artist John Cullen came and looked at several lettering jobs that he has
kindly offered to do.

To clear the breezeway for this weekend's festival and for a G scale
event to be held at the museum in two weeks, as a group effort we moved:
the mainline hand car to the Cadillac shed track and the handcar
in the breezeway to the mainline track;
the two baggage carts from the breezeway to the front of the station;
the unused interpretive sign stands into the fowler boxcar;
the arc welder into the express room;
the fuel drum under the fire escape to beside the tool shed;
the lumber under the fire ecape into the restoration building;
the steel roofing for the garden shed onto the ground;
the horse drawn plow into the mainline automobile boxcar; and
the three speeders into a line against the fire escape (bonus -
no more tripping over the chains);
two trolley carts down to the end of the main line.

George cleaned and tested the two bar-be-ques and moved them to the
breezeway. They are stored, less gas tanks in the baggage room. The
tanks are in the garden shed.

Tom moved a steel staircase from the container to beside 1112's cab for
visitor access. Alan cleaned 1112's cab interior and replaced some dead
light bulbs in the cab and he treated the headlamp to a brighter bulb.
There is space to store the stairway in the breezeway.

To start clearing enough space in the container for John Weir's tractor,
a second steel staircase was moved from it to under the breezeway fire
escape, and the track saw was also removed and chained under the paint
car near the switch project.

Alan cleaned inside the orange CN caboose and it is now ready to be
opened to the public.

Ross fixed a problem with the toilet in the ladies washroom by replacing
the kinked supply tube and a loose bolt to the floor.

Ross tried to repair the leaking faucet in the kitchen, it will need a
repair kit. Unfortunately the mini hot water tank in the kitchen didn't
like being disturbed and started to
leak. It had to be shut off. Ross will replace the relief valve.

Gee thoroughly cleaned the kitchen, including the inside of the fridge.

Ross returned two repaired screens for the end doors of the front track
caboose and took one from the back track caboose home for repairs.
Vandals at work.

Brian cleaned up the restoration building and removed everything from
alongside car 23 to give a clearer view of the car. He installed two
safety ropes at the edge of the platform along the length car 23. It's
safer but not perfect, so children will still have to be watched carefully.

Bill helped for a while, then went home to finish the safety rails he is
making for the hand car that he completely rebuilt last winter.
These will be installed on Friday so we will have 2 cars on two tracks.

Mike changed the mainline speeder's oil and cleaned and adjusted its
carburetor, reassembled everything and tested the engine. It will not
run at a constant speed, so we cannot use it this weekend.

John Weir and others continued to clear weeds from the two tracks.

Tom brought another box of books donated by the CSTM and he indexed and
catalogued about a dozen of them. Ross accessioned the newly donated
first aid kit, it is now installed in the blue caboose.

A ring of antique railway keys, including Grand Trunk and CNR, was
donated to the museum today. Too bad there's no way of knowing if the
CNR keys are Canadian Northern.

All of the accession forms, and some gift of deed forms were returned to the
museum under cover of darkness by a person "known". Tom is very
impressed by the level of detail recorded in the forms. We are now
planning how to get the basic information into a data base so we can do
searches in order to locate artifacts.

Ross had several locks re-keyed and the pins in others replaced to
increase our security of the collection and to reduce the level of
frustration with the shed lock.

Anne gave the museum's interior a good cleaning and Noel (her husband)
and Carl cleaned pigeon
droppings from the platform. Anyone for pigeon pie?.

Anne and the students are working on signage for the festival. The
students were kept busy between visitors with cleaning the station interior.

Gary brought his lawn tractor and hand mower and spent several hours
mowing. We must make an entry at the track gate so he can get his riding
mower over the track. A load of fill is required from the back 40. Also
we need to get him a gate key. Ross will do this.

The students painted the picnic table that was pressure washed and
scraped last week. We moved it into the breezeway out of the sun. They
also painted a bench, the wall repairs beside the men's washroom
entrance, and the gift shop door.

Ross moved one load of artifacts from the express room to the new
archives. A canvas mailbag was moved from the Fowler boxcar to the new
archives.

Ross delivered two small window A/C that he donated. One is for the gift
shop, one for the house upstairs.

Lunch of pizza was donated by Anne and Tony. Yummy.

Brian Kelsey.

Report for July 10 thru 13, 2010

It has been a very busy and productive week at SFRM.

On Thursday morning the volunteers met with Anne in the house. Purpose of
the meeting was to brief Anne on what the volunteers are doing and to
hear her plans for the museum and her plans for managing the enterprise..

We were introduced to Tim Penner who will be taking over setting up a
new website for the museum. We had lunch at a nearby restaurant to get him
informed of our past websites and what we would like to see on the new one.

Gerry installed a bypass switch on the breeze way lights. It is located
in the left cabinet where the meter is. Please use this switch to turn on
the lights when not turned on by the timer. Please DO NOT adjust the
timer, we have had to replace it three times as persons turn the dial
backwards and this strips the gears. He also replaced the broken switch
on the pendant light over the operators bay table, and installed a light
over the desk in the archives storage room in the house.

Some more track work was done.

A retired railway employee dropped by and left a donation, a first aid
kit from a caboose and some papers. He wants to volunteer.

On Friday Doug purchased a new play mat for the children's play area and
installed it. Very colorful.
The wooden fence blew over in the wind, a common occurance.

On Saturday Doug and the gardener lady worked on the flower beds near
the station.

On Sunday with the help of Tony and his small backhoe and the trailer we
were able to move the frog and points from the back 40 to the new switch
site. We now have to get a rail saw going, and a drill. Tony also
removed a tree from the station flower beds, and a tree in the way of
the track extension. He also pulled out two steel fence posts that we
had tried to remove by hand.

Bob Moore was whipping off grass around the property, and along the main
line. John Weir was also cleaning brush and grass from the line. Doug
and Bill M were seen trying to get the museums whipper going, seems to
have some problem with the gas feed. Sent out for repairs.

Bill M and Brian were back at the door of the paint car, the one door is
now repaired, one to go. The car now looks respectable, soon it will be
painted and lettered.

Doug K was removing weeds, small bushes, trash from the big flower beds
at the station. The site is now looking better thanks to everyone who
has worked at this in the heat wave.

Ross sanded the drywall repair at the wash room, now ready for painting.
He installed a door hook on the front yellow caboose and has taken two
door screens to his shop for repair. There is also one on the yellow
caboose on the back track that needs repairs. Vandalism.

Gee continued to put acid free shelf paper on shelves in the upstairs of
the house. Next week we will put a push on cleaning up the upstairs of
the house. There is a lot more shelving that can be erected to hold
books and magazines.

Al Westland continues to work on the switch. Now that we have the frog
moved some progress can be made quickly.

John Weir also gave tours and opened up his dental car to the public.

A load of library material was moved from the orange caboose to the
house. With some cleaning the car can now be opened for the public.

The students prime painted the repairs to the gift shop door.

Brian started the herald on the RHS of 1112's tender.

Ross Robinson

Report for Saturday and Sunday July 4th.

With input from Doug Kolish.

Doug worked on cleaning up the front garden both days. He brought 6
buckets of fill from the Town landfill for the garden and removed a bush
that was
deemed to be in the wrong place. The flower pots and stones were moved
to the garden shed area. The gardener lady was in on Saturday as well.

On Sunday Gee and I were there. I put another coat of drywall compound on
the wash room hallway corner, this will need a third coat before
painting. I also filled the holes in the outside of the gift shop door
made by vandals two years ago, some sanding and this will be ready to paint.

The heritage plaque needs another coat of Tuscan paint.

I brought the round shirt display stand back from storage to the gift
shop, the students will hang up the T shirts for better display.

I moved the bucket of parts and the alternator from the old air
compressor to the shed, then sorted out the parts. I will make the
distribution manifold at BRS in the next few weeks. If we can locate the
water pump removed last year I can get the compressor going. This will
be handy for operating the spike driver, sandblaster and spray painter.

I finished the day cataloguing artifacts in the house. Gee was weeding
around the house flower beds. Left at 2 pm as the heat was getting fierce.

Ross Robinson

Report for June 30 and July 1st and 2nd

Wednesday June 30

Grant and Mary Whittaker, from Merrickville, brought their own riding
lawn mower, push mower and trimmer and mowed the lawns. The museum has
not looked this good in years.

Ross has secured a donation of seeds for giant sunflowers that we can
plant in October. We should also plant some short annuals under them.
Could be spectacular.

Thursday July 1st.

1. Bill adjusted and lubricated the gears on the mainline hand car. To
test it, he had it up to 79 miles an hour. He was pumping so fast he was
little more than a blur.

2. George M. weed whipped the caboose line and elsewhere around the
property. The museum site is beginning to look quite respectable.

3. Doug and Alan were installing ties under where the # 7 switch will go
on the caboose line/restoration building lead.

4. John Weir was conducting tours. Brian gave tours of the restoration
building to a couple of families. Alan had a long conversation with a
couple from Barry's Bay.

5. Brian and Bill were installing more replacement boards in the paint
car (automobile boxcar) door.

6. John wants to bring his tractor to the
museum sooner rather than later. To that end, we will start to clear
enough space in the front of the container to store the tractor.

Friday July 2.

1. Alan installed the numbers on the front of his live steamer locomotive
displayed in the children's room. He also installed an interpretive
panel under the display cabinets.

Alan also brought out an early
1900's Globe school desk that he generously bought last week for the
museum's replica school car project. The museum now has three antique
school desks and a fourth that needs repairs. Duncan duFresne has
offered two more, bringing the total to six. About fourteen desks are
needed for the project.

2. Alan, Ross and Brian trailered a half dozen nine foot ties to the
restoration building lead work site. Alan with the aid of a track
jack and a steel bar lifted the outer rail going to the shed over the
adjacent rail and lowered it down. A bit more aligning and this can be
re-spiked. We are very close to needing the frog and points moved.

3. Ross cleaned up and patched a water damaged area on the wall to the left
of the men's washroom door. It will need another coat of drywall
compound and there is paint on hand to complete the job.

4. Tom worked on indexing eighteen railway books donated last week by the
Canada Science and Technology Museum. The books were duplicates at the
CSTM and Ryan Manson got them donated to the RMEO.

5. Doug worked on the track lead but had to leave early.

6. Bill pressure washed pigeon droppings on the platform and pressured
washed a picnic table and some barricades so they can be painted by the
summer students. As this works at removing old paint we will do this to
the cars before we paint them. Some scraping will also be required.

7. The summer students cleaned and then painted the building's bronze
historic plaque with
CP maroon. What a difference that made. They will second coat it today.
Then we will use a palm sander for polishing the lettering.

8. Ross, Bill and Brian took two trailer loads of artifacts from the
express room to the archives. There are 3 stoves and 4 teletypes to
move, then we can see what other large items lurk in the corners. Some
pictures were moved in the process -
the first of the paper artifacts to have been decontaminated for mold by
a prolonged exposure to alcohol fumes. Don't worry, it was methyl
alcohol. We wouldn't waste the good stuff. Absolutely thrilling news -
the missing 1940's pressed steel typewriter table was found under some
other furniture stored in
the house.

9. Ross removed the propane cylinder that had recently been placed in the
section house, because for reasons that are obvious, there's are laws
against keeping propane cylinders in enclosed buildings. It is in the
garden shed.

10. Bill and Brian moved the two heavy fold-up tables from the express room,
and set them up in the board room for Thursday's meeting of volunteers.
Earlier this spring, we removed the two tables from the children's area
because they are of a type that recently caused a fatality at a daycare
center in Ontario when a toddler pulled one over on himself.

11. Brian brought twenty of each of two John Cullen coloring sheets for the
children's room. He used photoshop to remove advertising and a coloring
contest from the sheets. One of each of the two coloring sheets was all
that we could find after the children's room was taken apart last year.

12. Bill and Brian brought a supply of screws, a few tools and a pressure
washer from the tool car to the restoration building, so they can be
used. They moved a track drill from the express room, to the tool car
for storage. The tool car is too far away for us octogenarians,
septuagenarians and Sexagenarians, to be considered an active tool car.
It is more a storage car.

13. At the end of the day we received a visit from two people scouting for
sites to shoot a major 1940's era movie. They want to use the station
platform and they will contact Anne about it. We gave them suggestions
for some other locations that they might be able to use that are in and
around Ottawa. They are looking for an old factory with tall ceilings
and floor to ceiling windows, to simulate a locomotive factory. It has
to be within about an hours drive from Ottawa. If anyone has any ideas,
let Anne know and she can pass it on when they contact her.

14. Gee Gee went to Ogdensburg NY and picked up a shipment of heavy
steel padlock covers. Now we can secure the cars against the vandals.

Ross and Brian.