Construction Journal of the
Page Last Updated: February 19, 2011
Webmaster: David Ramos
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Ralph Heiss, Neil Henning, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight was a big night. With a large crew I was able to get a lot done. Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Ralph Heiss worked on placing and gluing down Micro Engineering code 70 flex track down on the High Line and all of the way into staging. Neil Henning and Ted DiIorio work on trouble shooting first 28th Street then 27th Street. Later they ran new sub-busses for the High Line and High Line Staging. Craig Bisgeier work on converting a Walthers code 70 three way turnout to a DCC friendly turnout as demonstrated on Allen Gartner’s Wiring for DCC’s website. Excellent source for DCC tips! Great nights work, thanks guys.
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October 27th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Ted Pamperin |
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Last night I painted the staging deck flat black. Tonight we connected up the High Line to the staging deck. Craig worked on fixing up a track issue at 28th Street.
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October 15th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Jay Held |
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Tonight Jay Held came over and we wired up the High Line section that Craig and Ted Pamperin finished on Wednesday. Every section of flex track and turnout now has a feeder and has been attached to a sub-buss.
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October 13th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Ted DiIorio, Neil Henning, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight we started off by putting flex track and a pair of Micro-Engineering #6 turnouts. Ted Pamperin and Craig to care of the actual track work on the High Line section. Neil worked on the trouble ticket at 28th Street. It looks like there is need for a turnout replacement. Ted installed the new programming track. Ray began the installation of a speaker in my Proto 2000 0-8-0. A very busy night!
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| PARTICIPANTS | Phil Monat |
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Tonight I was lucky again to have Phil Monat come over and rebuild a balky turnout at 28th Street. This is the turnout that allows the Erie to switch out Terminal Stores. I put together the removable section of the High Line staging area. This section sits in front of the main electrical box and it needs to be able to be pulled quickly. I was able to get the new section of the Morgan Post Office mounted after I spent Sunday putting it together. I also started gluing bridge structure to the removable section of the High Line that wraps around the gas meter. We got a lot of work done tonight!
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September 29th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Neil Henning, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight’s work session started with me decaling a couple of New York Central 40’ boxcars. These plus the 10 cars left to go will bolster the New York Central fleet. Tom and Neil went over operating instruction for 28th Street yard. Neil will be the station agent for this Friday’s operating session. Ted and I worked on the turnouts at 30th Street then everyone started cleaning track. After everyone left tonight I flipped the waybills at 30th Street Yard and Terminal Stores. The layout is ready for Friday!
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September 15th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Neil Henning |
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I’m back from DragonCON and I ready to work! I started off the night by finishing up the construction of the High Line staging deck. Ted and I installed the under cabinet lights so that 30th Street staging will be well lighted. Tom Callan and Neil worked on building a gator board structure that will connect the staging deck to the High Line proper. This section has to be removable since it sits in front of the PSE&G gas meter. I like the solution that they came up with. Next on the agenda is the High Line support system, flex track, turnouts and then power. The High Line is about a month or two before wheels roll. I have to get ready for the next operating session which will be on October 1st and then on October 2nd I will presenting a clinic on the research, design and operating an HO scale version of the High Line at the Northeast Fallen Flags Railroad Prototype Modeling meet at the Bridgewater 4-H club. Till next time!
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Tonight I finished packing for DragonCON and had a couple of hours to kill so I worked on the Layout. I noticed at the last session that with all the new storage boxes at staging the shelf was sagging and the boxes were tipping because they overhanging by a few inches. So I built a new shelf that I glued down onto the original shelf. I also finished up a self that I started for 28th Street. This shelf will give the agent more room to spread out the paper work. 27th Street got a new shelf as well. This shelf will give the agent to pre-stage the car float and act as a transfer area for the cars on the car float.
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August 25th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Neil Henning |
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WiFi come to the New York Harbor Railroad! I spent a few hours today reclaiming a cast off from work. I took a seven year old Compaq/HP Evo D510 PC and install the latest version of Java and Version 2.10 of JMRI Panel Pro. After about five minutes of setting up Panel Pro I was able to take my wife’s iPod Touch and with the app WiFi Throttle Lite I was running trains! Really cool application to have. Many of my crew members have iPhones and this will work on them as well. Tom and Neil came by to help me get ready for Friday’s operating session. Neil worked on the newly repaired turn out at 28th Street making sure that it was still in gauge! Tom helped me stage the rest of the railroad. I cut out the new waybills and the railroad is ready to run. I need to pick up a new bottle of scotch for the session. I’m running low! My next work session is on September 8th. I’m off to Atlanta and DragonCON on September 2nd for some much needed R and R! See Ya.
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August 18th, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Ted DiIorio, Neil Henning |
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Tonight I started of the night by doing more work on the High Line. Ted came over and finished putting in the braces on the High line. Neil and I replaced a Blue Point at 28th Street. Neil and I build and installed the new auto platform at 28th Street.
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ralph Heiss, Neil Henning, Ray Lewis, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight we spent the night getting the railroad to operate on Friday night. Since my injury that layout has only had two operating sessions. Ted Pamperin and Ralph Heiss worked on putting down the styrene to be the concrete platforms on at the Lehigh Valley railroad 27th Street Yard. Neil Henning worked on spiking down the staging yard. Tom and Ralph also spent time cleaning rail all around the layout. Now it’s time to stage the layout for Friday.
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July 21, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ted Diorio, Bob Hall, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight I had a good night. This is the next to the last work session before the August 6th Operating Session. Craig came down with a first timer to the New York Harbor, Bob Hall. Craig took on the task of installing the cross bracing on the fourteen foot section of the New High Line structure. Bob tackled the clearing of the ballast from the rails at 28th Street. Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio and I worked on completing the new elevated platform that is at 27th Street. The 1/8th inch styrene is to be laminated on top of a sheet of ½ inch plywood. This puts the platforms just below the door on a box car. Ted Pamperin took the time to relocate two Caboose Industries grown throws to make room for the new platform. We got a lot of work done and at the end of the night Ted DiIorio showed us a trick on how to remove lettering off a boxcar using Comet powdered cleanser and a tooth pick. I will be doing a video with Ted to illustrate this technique. Until next time!
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July 16, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Ralph Heiss, Jay Held |
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Tonight Tom and Jay help me turn over the new High Line I have been working on since last week. The section under construction spans about thirteen feet and is about five inches high. The deck is ready for legs and track. The upper railings still need to be fabricated. Tom and I worked on the design of the new legs. They will be built out of Plastruct “H” columns that will need to have rivet details added later. Jay and Ralph continued the work on putting 1/8” styrene at 27th Street. This will be the concrete that covered the yard. Work is progressing well on this project. Wal-Mart had the three drawer storage bins on sale for $5.00 again. I picked up two new ones for 28th Street.
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July 11, 2010 |
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Today it was a bit cooler and I put some time on the High Line structure. I put the caps on the Central valley beams that Ted DiIorio glued down on Wednesday. |
July 7, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Ted DiIorio, Neil Henning, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight Ted Pamperin and Neil Henning continued the job that Jay and I started last Friday. They put down some more styrene that will be the concrete at 27th Street. Ted DiIorio and I worked on the High Line Structure.
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| PARTICIPANTS | Jay Held |
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Jay Held came over tonight and we worked on the concrete inserts for the Lehigh Valley’s 27th Street station. We got on full strip put in as well as more cobblestones at Erie’s 28th Street.
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June 30, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Ted DiIorio, Scott Dunlap, Neil Henning, Ray Lewis |
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Tonight Neil and Scott got most of the remaining 28th Street Yard ballasted. It is nice to see 28th Street getting a bit closer to being finished. Ted DiIorio worked on finishing up the station agents sheathing. Ray Lewis came by as well. It was nice to see Ray. Ray installed a Tsunami decoder in one of my New York Central RS-1s.
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June 25, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Jay Held, Neil Henning |
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I have a big crew tonight for an informal work session. Tom and Jay start off the night by helping me get further along on the Agents Station. I broke out the table saw and I milled my own 2x2 for legs. We then finished up all of the major cuts on the plywood. It was then off to the basement for assembly! Craig and Neil came by so I ask Neil and Jay to finish the track ballasting of 30th Street which they did. They then moved on to the ballasting of 28th Street. They did a great job! Craig, Tom and I finished up principle construction of the Agents Station as well. It still has to be clad in Masonite and painted but it’s done for the most part. Till next Wednesday night!
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Phil Monat, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight is a special night when my friend Phil Monat comes over from the Bronx to help out be replacing a troubled turnout at 27th Street. Phil was able to replace the faulty portions of the turnout now 27th Street is back up and fully operational. Ted Pamperin and Tom Callan also came over. Ted fixed a major set of issues at 30th Street. It seems that during my convalescence the heat and humidity in the basement caused damage to turnouts L-1 and L-4. Ted was able to repair both turnouts. Tom and I spent the night working on the Erie’s Agents Station. This is to be a self contained station for the agent to write his switch list for 28th Street as well as store cars for the car float. We got a good start and hope to finish it up on Friday night!
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I had foot surgery today to remove a bone spur. I need to be off my feet until the middle of June! See you in June. |
April 25, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Neil Henning |
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It’s a rainy Sunday and Neil came over and we worked on ballasting 30th Street. I also received the cobblestone from Jeff Adams at MoTrak Models. I cut up the first section and began fitting it at 28th Street.
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Jay Held, Neil Henning |
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Let the ballasting begin. I bought five pounds of black art sand to start ballasting 30th Street yard. Craig did a test a week ago to see how it will look great. 30th Street was covered on cinders and the art sand looks great. I ordered another 25 pounds to night. The cost for 25 pounds with shipping came out to $33.40. Neil and Craig put down the remainder of 5 pounds of ballast tonight Jay came over and helped me get the recently painted 27th Street ready for a car float only operating session as well rebuilding the supports for the 27th Street to Terminal Stores connector.
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March 30, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Neil Henning, Ted Pamperin |
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Five plus weeks in a stinking cast! If I was a horse someone would have shot me by now! Its official, I’m destined to have surgery in a few weeks two fix my right foot. I will be in a cast until June! Tonight was a good night anyway. The guys came by for the work session just before the April 2nd operating session and we got a lot accomplished. Ted Pamperin spent the night tuning up the turnouts at 30th Street. I picked up Art Sand from the internet and Craig put a small section down as a test at 30th Street. It is very inexpensive and looks very good. It is suppose to represent fine cinders and I think it pulls it off. We also powered the Lehigh Valley to Terminal Stores connector and made a test run. Neil and Tom clean and checked both 28th Street and 27th Street. Hope it all works on Friday night Operating Session!
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March 17, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Ted Paperin |
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Pain and Pain Killers are not conducive to good work habits. My foot while feeling better is cutting down my work schedule. The crew came over tonight and we fixed most of the bugs that came up during the operating session. Craig and Jay put in another bell crank for the “M-1” turnout at 30th Street so it much smoother now. Tom worked on the High Line structure that I started and the major sections are starting to shape up nicely. Ted Pamperin and Ted DiIorio worked on the Gator Foam bench work and later on the track for the Lehigh Valley to Terminal Stores connector. I built a couple of cars which is a major feat when you have been on Percocet for a month! Here is what I learn about Percocet and track and electronic work, they don’t mix! MEK and Percocet made for an interesting evening.
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February 28, 2010 |
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Five days in a cast and a bunch of Percocet and instead of resting I’m working on the layout. So what did I do, I put in the staging tracks and fascia as well as the rest of the tracks and all of the Blue Points at 30th Street. I even tried to wire in the Blue Points!
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February 23, 2010 |
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Bad news tonight, I seem to have hurt my right foot and after seeing a doctor I have a damaged achillies tendon. So I’m now in a soft cast and will be in the cast for at least a month. Two months if there is a fracture so it's off to the lab for an X-Ray! With all that I did put in all of the remaining bluepoints and all of the power drops. I have the fascia and throw rods it just a case of getting them in.
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February 17, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Tom Callan, Ted DiIorio, Ralph Heiss, Ted Pamperin |
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Tonight was a big night on the layout. Ralph and Tom took 27th Street out for a spin and it work very well. I had to re-gauge two turnouts but everything else went fine. Ted DiIorio, Ted Pamperin and Craig Bisgeier spent the night connecting the turnouts I had put down earlier in the week. At the end of the evening I was a couple of tracks short of the yard being finished so I put them in and then put the bluepoints in.
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February 10, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | ****MAJOR SNOW STORM **** Solo Night |
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What a day! Over a foot of snow in a storm that started at around 5:30 AM. I took the kids to the hill for some sledding after work then straight to work on the trains. I worked on putting more ties down and finishing up the Float Bridge and 27th Street. I had to wait for glue to dry so I flipped back and forth on both! At the end of five long hours 27th is done except for some wiring and mounting the Duncan’s Frog Juicers and I got three more turnout ties down at 27th Street.
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February 5, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Jay Held |
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Jay Held came over tonight and well built the DCC hub for my NCE system. I was able to clean up a lot of the wiring and by the end of the night the railroad was up as far as DCC was concerned.
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| PARTICIPANTS | Ted DiIorio, Ralph Heiss, Neil Henning |
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Good work night. Started off working on the reworking the wiring for the DCC system. I was never happy with the location and the look and feel of the wiring. I started off by making labels for all the major legs of the system then when in and labeled them. The crew came down and we began working on different tasks to get me back up and running for March 5th. Neil and I built the new bench work for the Railway Express sidings at 30th Street. Later Neil and Ted worked and installing track and ties for the newly remodeled 30th Street while Ralph and I worked on the High Line mechanical room pass through bench work.
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January 29 - 31, 2010 |
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Amherst Railway Society's Springfield Train Show!
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January 28, 2010 |
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I laid out the yard tonight. I used paper templates and the code 83 flex track from the previous mole yard. After thinking about the design I realized that the crossover was in the wrong direction. I then fix that issue.
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January 20, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Craig Bisgeier, Ted DiIorio, Ralph Heiss, Neil Henning, Ed Majori, Ted Pamperin, Wayne Shortman |
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Tonight I started off by working on the Lehigh Valley Float Bridge. I had spent the night before building and test fitting the space frame for the new mole yard. Ed came down with Wayne Shortman. Craig, Ralph, Ted DiIorio, Ted Pamperin, and Neil also came down so it was a full house. We broke up into teams and built the top of the new mole yard and installed the mechanical room connector. Ted and Ed finished up connecting the power drops at 27th Street to the Frog Juicers. We got a lot done and I will be painting tomorrow so I can layout the tracks on 30th Street.
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January 18, 2010 |
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It’s a solo night for me. I decided to put a couple of hours in on the layout so I built a frame for the staging yard. I used my Kreg bit to build it. The Kreg bit cuts pockets into the plywood that allows me to make solid edge joints. It also allows me to fasten the table top to the frame without the use of the brad gun. It also makes tighter connections then I was getting with the brad gun method.
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January 15, 2010 |
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| PARTICIPANTS | Neil Henning |
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Tonight Neil came over and we worked on fitting the new 30th Street bench work. I also decked the 27th Street Pier with Neil to wrap up a work night.
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| PARTICIPANTS | Tom Callan, Ralph Heiss, Neil Henning |
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Tonight Ralph, Tom and I ripped out the original 30th Street bench work and enlarged the opening at 30th Street. This new larger opening will accommodate a new three track freight house and REA two tracks siding that will be located under the Morgan Post Office. Neil worked on installing the power drops for the Hex Frog Juicers at the Lehigh Valley’s 27th Street Yard.
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Last Updated: February 19, 2011
