I post a weekly work report to the SC RR Museum's Yahoo list. Thought y'all might find this week's report interesting:

"If anything can possibly go wrong, it eventually will."
-Murphy's Law

"If nothing can go wrong, you've obviously overlooked something."
-Main corollary to Murphy's Law

"Murphy was an optimist"
-Second corollary to Murphy's Law

--

This week's main project was changing out a broken rail in the cut. The
break was noticed a couple months ago and this was the first chance we
had of doing the repair. While it definitely needed to be changed ASAP,
the break was contained within a joint so it wasn't a terrible safety
hazard -- we could afford to wait until the earliest convenient time to
do the work. That "earliest convenient time" was this weekend.

It was a beautiful day, but a wee bit cooler than we would have really
liked for working down in that deep hole. Things got off to an
excellent start with a good-sized crew. The new timetable is now in
effect, so the motor car trip out to the broken rail was agonizingly
slow at 5 mph pushing the tool car. When the motor car now undergoing
overhaul at Jack Woerhle's shop in Columbia is done, we'll definitely
be using two motor cars (one on each end) from now on to avoid extended
shoving moves like that.

The rail replacement went amazingly well. The spikes holding the bad
rail were a bit of a nuisance, since the ties are all new -- it
required some considerable effort to remove the old spikes. Aside from
that, though, the broke rail came out pretty easily. The new rail was
about an eighth of an inch longer and wouldn't quite fit. We were able
to solve this problem by loosening the next joint to the west and
bumping the adjacent rail down the hill a bit. The whole project was
finished in a little over two hours -- pretty good considering we had
no power machinery and were doing it all by hand.

After lunch, we loaded up the 1249 with tools and bolts, then headed
out to Rion to do some more bolt tightening and replacement. It was now
that things started to go wrong. We got all the way out to Rion before
realizing that we'd left the socket for the air impact wrench back at
Rockton. We shut the engine down and did what we could by hand while
someone drove back to get the socket.

It wasn't long after Clif returned with the socket that we encountered
our first bolt that needed to be removed with the "heat wrench" -- the
oxy-acetylene torch. The torch hadn't been used in a couple years. We
immediately discovered that the hose was clogged up. Much fiddling and
poking with sticks and then a wire I found on some of the junk at Rion
finally solved this problem, and Clif was able to get the offending
bolt removed. The "heat wrench" got used a couple more times, too.
Several joints required much fiddling and cursing to get right.

We were just getting into our groove when we heard the locomotive,
which we were using as our air compressor, suddenly rev up. We all
looked up, wondering what was going on. Clif waked up to the engine to
find out. Next thing we know, the engine shut down and Clif disappeared
into the hood.

Uh-oh.

It seems the coupling between the main generator and the air compressor
came loose. The engine revved up because the load of the compressor was suddenly removed. This coupling gave Clif some headaches when the
generator was first put back in after being rebuilt.

The only option was for a crew to go back to Rockton and bring the 1276
out to Rion to rescue the disabled locomotive. The only vehicle
available was a pickup. Clif wisely chose the passenger seat in the
cab. John Parker and I got to sit in the open bed.

Halfway to Rockton, John said something to me about "rosy cheeks." I
replied that beards come in handy sometimes. :o)

Jack Woerhle and Chris Rambo had taken Jack's put-put motor car out
behind the locomotive to do some tree cutting. They did a fine job of
logging off some of the trees around the old water tank just east of
Rion. They came back just as the pickup rolled into the Rockton yard
with an engineer and two half-frozen trainmen. Some quick switching was
done to move the Museum's motor car out of the way while Clif fired up
the 1276. Then off we went to rescue the 1249.

Halfway around the Mack plant, the ground fault on the 1276 tripped.
After resetting it, Clif announced that he'd lost throttle notches 4
and up.

John folded his hands and prayed to the god of railroad museums to just
get the two locomotives back to Rockton. "That's all I ask," he
pleaded. The prayer must have done some good. A few minutes later, Clif
announced that notch 4 was back. The engine gave no further problems.

The 1276 had been coupled to caboose #01063 for a charter a couple weeks ago. Rather than go to the trouble of uncoupling and skating the car, we just brought it along. It gave us a nice comfortable platform for the return trip -- although the train looked ridiculously overpowered with two locomotives and a caboose! The return trip was made without incident and we managed to get everything skated and shut down. Then we collapsed in relief.

I'll keep y'all posted on what happens with the generator. We may have
to take it back out and return it to Hobgood Electric for re-repair.
Everyone hopes that this doesn't prove necessary.

Congrads on getting everything back in. I kind of believe, railroads work in there own time continuum. Nothing but nothing ever goes smoothly or as easily as you think it should. I do wonder, what it was really like, back in the good old days.

Hal Shelley, one of our conductors, had a policy thet no matter how simple the call, he brought his lantern and his lunch.