Lake Shore Live Steamers.com

Located at

Penitentiary Glen
8668 Kirtland-Chardon Rd
Kirtland, Ohio 44094

Steve and Bonnie Zaken are breaking up and burning the limbs from the trees and brush that was encroaching on the track to get rid of them. Dave Hird was checking out lubricating and adjusting the switches for the switch maintenance committee that he is on.

Dave Cryor talks with Dave as he works on one of the many switches in Horrendous. In this view Rick Nagy with Dave riding behind him, pushes the ballast car which they had just loaded heading to Thorn as we are doing track ballasting today.

Rick arriving at Thorn at the location where we will start dumping ballast. With the chute gate removed the car is pushed forward as it dumps the ballast on the side of the track.

After dumping ballast on both sides of the track, Ken Brooks and Dave put the chute gates back in. Old habits are hard to die because while those guys left to reload the ballast car I took the "old" broom and swept down the track manually. Rick reminded me that we have a power sweeper.

Meanwhile, Bonnie called that lunch was ready so we broke for lunch to enjoy a good meal. Some of the crew looked over the Park engine trying to figure out why the engine smoked so much.

On the north leg of the Pandora "Y", ballast was dumped along both sides of the rail and this time we will use the power sweeper. Rick running the power sweeper forward to the newly re-ballasted area.

Rick slowly pushes the ballast sweeper as he levels out the ballast down to the top of the ties which he does in two passes and this is the 1st pass. We still use the manual broom, but just to get rid of that slight ridge the sweeper leaves after we sweep the track.

An overall view of the length of the track with one pass of the sweeper over the area that we are doing. Ken Brooks with the train at the end of Big Bend Bridge with Dick agitating the ballast so it will drop through the chutes onto the track without skipping an area.

The re-ballasting of the track continues as they pass through Pandora on their way to Shoe. Back at the ballast piles John Koontz and Ken reload the ballast car, our work isn't done yet but we are running out of ballast.

Out by Summit on the Branchline, Ted Nyland was measuring off for one of the remote controllers for the switch. After dumping the ballast on the mainline by Cider Bridge. Frank Foti was operating the sweeper to take care of the newly placed ballast.