Lake Shore Live Steamers.com

Located at

Penitentiary Glen
8668 Kirtland-Chardon Rd
Kirtland, Ohio 44094

We removed the rails from the plate girder bridge and run them through the rail bender to get the curvature going into the first switch off the plate girder bridge. A view from the end of the bridge at the curved track that will be moved over to give us more clearance by the tree.

Dick Clark starting to screw the bent rails back down to the deck of the plate girder bridge. John Koontz scraping out the existing ballast for the switch in the foreground to be placed in that spot.

With the rail gauges in place, Dick continues to screw down the rail starting at the crossing and working towards the bridge. At the other end of the bridge you can see how much the steel rail has been moved over from the rusted spots on the existing timbers.

The switch panel has been placed into its respective spot and you can see how much the end of the track panel beyond that has to be moved over to align with the switched rail. With prodding and pushing we got the existing rail panels moved over to align with the ends of the switch.

Back at the station Bonnie pressed John into the cooking duties on the grill for our lunch. Bonnie Zaken said when she's done with John that she would give him back to our track crew.

Dick is cutting one of the rails at the end of the existing track panels to match the rail on the switch for length. John and Dick are putting the screws in the rail clips to join the rails together.

The joint area just needs ties under the rail and the fasteners to join the two together. The second switch is tentatively placed in position to see how much existing ballast has to be removed as the guys take a break.

With the existing ballast removed and "new" switch panel positioned, Dick works to connect the rail joiners to the other switch panel. So now we have two switches in place and the existing rail connected into the first switch and now we need ballast.

John and Frank Foti load the ballast car as Dick watches and Edith Hacker takes a break from her work to watch the action. You can see the cleared area on the side of the track that we did to move the track over which will now require filling with ballast again.

Frank waits to open the side chutes as Dick comes down the Branch Line to our work area with the ballast car. The ballast car really does a nice job of putting down alot of gravel in a very short period of time and well placed.