Any recent news on the Railroad Museum of New England's long-term project of restoring their New Haven Alco FA-1?


david.wilkins@bardstown.com

We are still awaiting the proverbial "blind man with the blank check." But,seriously...

Progress has been ongoing over the past few years-but slow. There have been only two people (another fellow and myself) working the project-as the parent group has been otherwise occupied running the Naugatuck Railroad.

Another constraint is the fact that almost every piece of equipment applied to the locomotive will be either be new or completely reconditioned. For every hour of actual labor on the locomotive, there has been approximately two hours invested in engineering.

An example of this is the air brake system. The original 24RL equipment had been partially stripped out by the LIRR. Consequently, there was some water damage to the piping. We could not get the brakes to work correctly after a great deal of deliberate effort. After due consideration, it was decided to remove the 24RL and convert to 26.

The winter of 2002-2003 was spent engineering the new brake sytem. In the spring of 2003, material was procured and the work began. The first step was to construct mounting surfaces for the various pipe brackets, reservoirs and ancilliary equipment. Working off our bill of material, we procured the various brake valves, pipe and fittings, etc.

After mounting the pipe brackets, we began the task of pipe fitting-replacing almost every piece of hard piping above the platform. Not a pleasant job...

This past summer, it was necessary to replace all the "temporary" plywood sides-as the old ones were 10 years old and were rapidly returning to nature. We accomplished a partial replacement until the cold weather overtook our efforts.

When the weather takes a turn for the better, we will return to the task of completing the brake system. This will involve running all the smaller copper lines.

If you have any further questions, feel free to email me.

> Any recent news on the Railroad Museum of
> New England's long-term project of restoring
> their New Haven Alco FA-1?


newhaven0401-NOSPAM-@verizon.net