Lake Shore Live Steamers.com

Located at

Penitentiary Glen
8668 Kirtland-Chardon Rd
Kirtland, Ohio 44094

Today we're going to put in the 22° crossing that was a joint effort between Bill Deptowicz, who machined the frogs and David Foster who procured the steel and welded all the parts together. A view looking towards Short from the approximate location of where the crossing will be.

Ted Nyland looking over the proposed location of the crossing which is on steel rail which will have a section cut out for the crossing to be installed. A view of the 22° crossing that was made up with steel rail and the "ties" were made out of steel channels 2" x 1" with the toes down and the frogs were milled from 3" x 1" bar stock.

John Koontz watches as Lew Fowler and Dick Clark take the rail clips off at the end of the switch in preparation for adding the switch that Lew has got his foot on. With the clips removed the track panel was picked up by Lew and Dick and carried off to the side.

Dick takes a break as John scrapes out the existing ballast in preparation for setting the new switch panel in place. With the existing ballast removed, a new switch panel was positioned in place and it looks like it's going to work out real good.

Dave Hird was working on switch maintenance checking out the throws and lubricating the ties so the points would slide when the switch was thrown. Ted Nyland and Chris Cooper were working on relocating the remote switch throw that controls traffic either down through Short or back onto the Main Line.

The choice for the control rod was to put it in a tube under the ties or to go through the rail and the latter was chosen and this is a view of how they did it. A view of the rod passing through the two rails that were drilled out to receive the necessary clearances around the rod.

You can see in this photo how the existing rod had a universal midpoint because it was on the inside of the curve to control the switch. Dave Foster was doing weed maintenance on the track and here he is working on the track at Short.

Back up on the eastbound mainline track, the switch has been put in place and the rail joiners connected with rails at the far end cut to length and fastened in place. This is an overview of the area we are working on and you can see another crossing is going to be required to get over to the return Branch Line track which is adjacent to the switch laying in the distance.

Back at Short looking up from the switch you can see the progress Chris and Ted are making in relocating the control rod for the remote switch controller. A view from the other end from the controller that will be accessible from either track from the left or right.

Back at the newly placed switch, John is tamping the ballast in place as Dick clears the stones from between the guard rails of the switch. Out on the Branch Line I caught Rick Nagy blowing the leaves off the track in preparation for the run coming up this weekend.

It was decided to add guardrails, in case of a derailment, around the control rod running through the rails so here Chris is screwing them down to the ties. A view of how they are sandwiched in between the two guard rails for protection.

Now that the new switch has been positioned, Rick Nagy starts scarfing out the soil and ballast in front of the switch that will take us off to the Short Line. We run the steel rails through the rail bender starting to approximate the curve required to get us over to our new crossing point.

Up at our storage facilities the guys were working on the Park engine again as it seems after reworking the shift linkage that there wasn't enough forward throw on the shifter before you ran an interference with the engine housing. Lew Fowler, George Metts and Joe Banzer were working on the problem and take a break for the photographer.

Rick uses the tie lifter as John gets ready to set another screw in with the rails held in position by the steel gauges. Paul Zorko assists John with the laying of the track for a while as it's hard on the knees for us older guys.

More rails placed and the rail joiners added as they continue with the placement of the ties. Here you can see the guys have built the equivalent of two track panels to continue the sweeping curve towards the crossover on the mainline.

Rick provides the muscle power as Dick guides a piece of steel rail through the rail bender as Steve Zaken watches.The rails are all bent to the curvature required and we decided that was enough for today that we didn't have enough time to tear up the mainline and put in the new crossing because of the run this weekend, it was a good work session today.