15" workday, April 25, 2009

On Saturday the 25th I ran out on the Harley to assist Brendon Hilton and his crew of dedicated helpers on an historic endeavor. The plan was to finish the 15" gauge balloon loop on the mesa before their Spring Meet on the first weekend in May. Well it seems that Brendon and company had been at it since Wednesday and had the loop completed excepting final grading and alignment. That was done in quick order and I had the opportunity to operate the 'ore car' with the Sessum's ballast car in tow through the new cut. That is an impressive piece of work Brendon and all the others; that whittled on that section of real estate from April of 2007 when this picture was taken and twenty five months later when the dream was fulfilled, a train can pass through. Later in the morning a few more helpers arrived and the switches were raised just west of the bridge and work progressed on the other side of the abyss above the museum cars. The existing track panels that were past the bridge were removed to allow the grading crew a clear shot at leveling and grading. The roadbed clear up to the base of the hill behind the caboose was regraded and soon the track crew was replacing the old section of track just east of the bridge. Now this rail the 15" use is thirty something feet long, so it doesn't take long to have 100 feet of track laid out, and their tie spacing is a lot further apart too. With the help of their handy dandy 'Iron Maiden' tie holder three guys can get ties put to the rail pretty quickly without too much pain. By the time I left around four that afternoon there was track back to the caboose and it was ready to grade already. A great accomplishment from a hand full of people in short order of time. Brendon's report of the weeks accomplishment is more telling of all that was done and by who, I just wanted to get the word out about what had transpired on the last weekend in April. Something that the early members of JT had envisioned, and has now come to pass.">