Durand Speeder Work Day 2018

Work Day for our Chippewa Valley Motorcar Club was Saturday, April 28, 2018.  The goal was to get the line ready for the May speeder rides starting in a week by changing oil in the 'locomotives,' greasing axles on all the cars, and clearing brush down the line.  With the late spring, the trees and brush are still quite barren as they are usually leaved out by this time.  With the coming warm weather and rain, this will soon again look fantastic and full of migratory birds.

Paul Johnson and I started the morning by firing up one of our cranes to re-rail a dumpy car that had been on the ground since last fall.

Terry Yust was in charge of changing oil on the locos (sorry, no pix) while the rest of us made quick work of greasing the axles.  Here Doug Anderson greases a car.

As we were rearranging some cars, one of the hopper cars jumped the rails!!

Even though these cars aren't full size railroad equipment, they still weigh a LOT!

Some wood blocking and a jack and we are able to get it back on rail.

It turns out the gauge was narrow, so we removed spikes, spread the rails to proper gauge, and re-spiked!
Yours truly does the spiking while lots of 'inspectors' make sure I am doing it right!

And now the track works PERFECT!!!
So it is time to find how many trees were downed over the winter and blocking our path.

A fine mess you got me in this time!  But chainsaws make quick work of the tangle.

Paul and Dave Linderud contemplate how they are going to get this tree down!

And some of the higher ups require the assistance of the Santa Fe A4!

We come to as far as we can go--SAVOY.  This washout has held us up for years.  We are really hoping to fix this problem this spring/early summer so we can ride the rails for a few more miles!