The past few weeks have been fairly busy out at the shop.? It all started on October 8th with Ken, Ken, Aaron and John heading out to a friends farm in Niagara Falls. We were offered some used railway ties, which were in a rather large pile outside. Thankfully we used his John Deere skid steer to sort through the pile, and inspect each individual tie.? What we were able to gather were about 100 fair to decent relay ties, which will be more than suitable for our use out at the shop. 30 ties have been moved to the site and laid out in preparation for continued track construction.? Despite having a bearing disintegrate on us while we were on our way back for another load of ties, getting 30 out to the site and somewhat in place was pretty decent.

Ken Jones operates the skid steer, pulling down the pile, laying out the ties, and discarding the defective ones back into another pile (left).? Aaron White and John Weylie inspect each tie as its pulled from the pile.? The final result was about 100 ties to be used to finish off the middle track to the turnout, and some track beyond the points (right).

30 ties, ready for the rail to place on top and spiked down. This will allow us to get closer to our goal of being able to move equipment from track to track for display and work purposes (left).? The new window covers on the west wall of the shop. This is a test to see how the corrugated plastic will hold up over the winter (right).

?October 20th started out cloudy, but then the sun came out and despite a bit of wind, it was still a good day to work.? Unfortunately, that was not going to last, as the clouds and rain rolled in.? Still, a small crew of Rick, Aaron, Karen, Ken & Ken came out to put up some corrugated plastic on the west wall.? The window was framed with 2×4?s and the plastic secured to that. This will be a test to see how well it actually works.? Even with a pretty good downpour, we still managed to get the windows covered in.? There is still about an hours worth of work to be done, but this is a great start.