Happy team at the end of a long work day
President Bob opened the meeting at 12:32, and asked that we have a short meeting so we can get back and prepare for Saturday.
11 members in attendance. Bob Silverstein, Bill Boller, Jerry Tomei, Russ Sonnnenschein, Lance Ginner, Bruce Swanson, Carl Herrera, Tom Waterfall, Kevin Hayashi, Mike Ward, and new member Dave Luce (who comes faithfully on Thursdays!)
We have three new members, Dave Luce (above), who introduced himself. He is from PV. Years ago, he had visited the tanks and met Jacques. He loves trains; and his wife signed him up -- via Ken Kormanak!
The other two new members are Peter Randall and Evan Bautista. Anthony Caccia is also a potential new member. Some of these folks still work so we won’t see them but on run weekends.
Treasurer’s report – Kevin.
We have $11,775.17 in our bank account.
Accounts Receivable is $200; (Dues from 2 members), no Accounts Payable.
We now have 72 members, including life members.
We are not spending very much currently, but will be spending more in the next 6 months on the Caboose Loop expansion project. We’ve spent $1,969.84 on RR maintenance year to date.
Project Status Reports
Lumber Camp Route -
Railings for the Lumber Camp Bridge by the staircase need fabricating and installing, but are delayed due to focus on the expansion project.
Switch Stands - Tom wIll get back on these after the girder bridge supports and other real time parts and fixtures for the expansion project. Also need to have all the 45 angle pieces re-drilled to a larger size for gutter boards - Jerry will do this.
Caboose Loop Route -
Right of Way -
Grading; Kevin and Bruce cleaned up from the tunnel to just short of the lumber camp. Bruce, Bill, Russ and Kevin are Laying out track panels for installation on Saturday. Need to figure out how many more track panels we need and of which curvature to be ordered by Kevin.
Track Laying - Bruce. We will need 8 or 9 folks on track laying Saturday; Kevin will be overseeing operations.
[ed note -- and indeed got them! The team laid out, cut to fit, drilled, joined, aligned and filled in ties on 150’ of double track; from crossing the Bow-String Truss bridge, through the tunnel and 20’ beyond out toward the overlook. See pictures on the website for Work Day June 26th ].
South overlook road bed buttressing. - expedited, now for all purposes is complete.. We have 2 boxes of new drill bits, so should be ready to rock and roll on track installation. We will make up two kits for the track laying teams. Kevin asks that the outside rail be drilled during panel construction, but not the inside rails, because that one gets cut to fit in the field.
Little Buildings - Gary completed and returned his little building (the IOOF meeting hall). Dick has given his Smokey lookout tower materials to Randy. Ron is reconstructing lumber camp buildings with real scale redwood siding Mike milled out of our left over redwood trestle stock.
Track Fabrication. - We have about 3 - 4 weeks of work left to do to complete all the repairs. We will get enough new “I” beam material to build 10 more test panels. There were some anomalies we need to investigate in the one test panel we have already built and installed. Brandon will pick up the material for us in July.
Ordering Materials
We need more base rock. Bruce has one more load coming in and we will level up the loading area in front of the gravel hopper with what we don’t use on the ROW. We will also build one or two portable funnels to make it easy to load Gritty Gravel cars with a tractor with ballast track starting at the tunnel area. The blue Club engine will be put there to move ballast, and remain for 2 months or so and thus not available for other projects.
For retaining walls, we wIll order about 100 real RR ties from Niles Canyon RR. Matt has negotiated a very reasonable price for us to get these.
As mentioned previously, enough tie material for 10 10’ test panels
Run Days
June 26th, our normal run day has been converted to a work day (described above)
Things are looking up for a joint meet in October (normally held in June) with Sac and GG.
Bob closed meeting at 1:12
Mike Ward
Secretary