Lake Shore Live Steamers.com

Located at

Penitentiary Glen
8668 Kirtland-Chardon Rd
Kirtland, Ohio 44094

Someone exceeded the design load of our Stanek Car Barn lift and broke the welds on the eyebolt anchor alongside the hydraulic cylinder. In this close-up you can see how it ripped the weld loose and cracked the vertical support after bending it to a 60° angle because the load exceeded the design.

Wayne Boron shown here is trying to get the cable ferrel off of the damaged eyebolt and you can see how it was bent. Dave Foster brought out his welder and the old welds were ground down and the bracket pulled back in the place by a clamp in preparation for welding.

John Koontz and Dick Clark placed a curved track panel at the end of the switch coming off the truss bridge for the Branch Line at Fillmore. After the ballast was removed, the curved panel was repositioned with a rail joiner clip so we could measure a piece of rail to fill in from the frog to the new rail.

Here Paul Zorko is adding the ties that the rail between the panels will be fastened down to. Frank Foti holds the piece the aluminum rail down as Dick cuts it to length with the battery-operated saw.

With the two rails joined to the switch we have another section of the track in place. Using the existing curvature on the Branch Line we laid the ties right on top of the existing track and bent rails to get the radius and here Frank is screwing the rails down to the ties.

As John prepares to start fastening down the rail to the ties, Paul sets the track gauges into position on the two rails. With two new track panels in position the guys take a break.

While the track crew takes a break I went back to check the progress that Paul and Dave were making on repairing the lift and the bracket was re-welded and the new eye bolt was in position. The completed connection with the cable through the eye bolt and the cable just needing to be properly tensioned.

Wayne working on the lift and adjusting the tensioning so the lift will rise and be level. Three hands are needed so Joe Banzer helped Wayne in getting the proper adjustment to the lift cables.

The crew decided to re-ballast part of the track from the Park Access road on the Main Line down to the water tower by the steaming bays. Here comes Dick with another hopper full of ballast that will soon be spread along the track.

Dick proceeding slowly forward as the the ballast car dumps the limestone on the left-hand side of the track going towards the Park Access road as Ken Vendlinger watches. Dick operating the ballast sweeper at Hemlock on the Main Line.

The ballast sweeper in action as it raises a cloud of dust from the newly placed limestone. We use two grades of limestone, one of fines and the other what they call #57 which we mix one to one when we load the hopper. After it rains this mixture really locks together to hold the track in place.