Lake Shore Live Steamers.com

Located at

Penitentiary Glen
8668 Kirtland-Chardon Rd
Kirtland, Ohio 44094

Rick Nagy backs the work train into the siding for the gravel piles with our newly acquired ballast hopper car. Rick, Hal Seiler and John Koontz make sure the plates in the bottom are closed as they prepare to shovel ballast into the hopper.

Hal shovels the last few shovel loads of ballast as Rick watches the progress to complete the load for this run. Lew Fowler helped get the yellow engine back out on the lift so they could continue to work on the hydraulics to get them finished off and get the engine running again.

With Rick pushing the ballast car ahead of the work engine he slowly made his way down the track spreading the ballast to one side only. This new ballast car that we got really is the cats whiskers saving a lot of backbreaking work in manhandling the 5 and 6 gallon pails of ballast that we used to dump along the track.

This view shows Dick Clark using the shovel to pry out the chute gate to adjust the ballast flow that was coming down onto the track. When you're dumping ballast on one side you have to agitate the ballast in the hopper to keep it flowing steady which a lot probably depends on how wet the ballast is.

The ballast car does a really nice job of dropping the ballast alongside the track without allowing it to be up on top of the rail to interfere with the car going down the track. Today we celebrated Bonnie Zaken's birthday through the courtesy of Frank Foti who provided the cake, Bonnie just turned 39...would you believe?

Bonnie cutting her cake as she gets an assist in handing out the pieces of cake from Edith Hacker to those present. A view looking down the tables at those that enjoyed the meal that she prepared for lunch along with her cake. Happy Birthday Bonnie!

Work continued on the grounds maintenance as Ken Vendlinger was on the riding mower cutting the grass behind the station. Continuing the work on the yellow engine, Wayne Boron and Joe Banzer were trying to get it in some semblance of a finished state.

Rick making a point as John watches Wally Pausch put a shovel full of the ballast into the hopper. A view of how we dropped the ballast along the track as we approached the switch with ballast showing on both sides of the track.

Rick leveling the track before we tamp. Down the track from Rick, Dick was laying alongside the track sighting down it and letting Rick know if the track had a high or a low spot that had to be worked out.

We had a friendly visitor as a black rat snake passed by our area of work on his way for looking for a meal. Although a lot of people think that the snake is slimy, they really aren't and are good for keeping the mouse population down along with toads and frogs.

You can see by this picture that he's probably about 5 feet long but he didn't bother us and we didn't bother him. Hal was sweeping down the ballast after it was tamped and Dick in the background with the rake leveling the ballast somewhat before Hal passed by.

Dave Foster brought some of the parts the guys were waiting for and they continued to work on the engine. Dave and Joe as they work together to put fittings on the end of the hydraulic hoses.