PPE

Me, dressed in appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for track work at or near grade crossings. For those of you not familiar with PPE I will give an explination of the function of each piece of equipment and why it is important.

Starting at the top is the hard hat. In truth it is largely unnessasary for the type of work I am doing, however with the TLEW emblem it serves to make me appear more "official." In addition it does at least somewhat protect my head from falling debris while clearing brush, doing signal work or working above my head in general.
Next is the safety glasses. I have perscription safety glasses and wear them my entire waking day. Safety glasses protect my eyes from flying debris.
Just from looking at the picture the safety vest's function should be obvious: In normal, non-directional light the white reflectors appear gunmetal gray! I bought the vest for working near road-railroad grade crossings, mostly to be sure that I am visable to passing motorists. But again, I think it helps me to appear more "official."
My Carhartt coat in and of itself could also be considered PPE. In addition to keeping me warm it is also extremely abrasion resistant, and thus protects me from cuts and scrapes whilst I am working.

That's all I have for now. I have plans for another post, and pictures for it as well, which I plan on posting tommorow.

My Truck, Ready for Action!

My truck actually looks semi-important right now with the TLE&W emblem attached to the door! The emblem is a magnet, which I borrowed to use whilst working on the railroad, just to make me look more "official." I just finished painting the rust at the bottom of the door, which certainly helps make the whole thing look better.

Now if only the passenger side looked better...

Train Whistle

My first post is about one of several projects I am doing for TLEW: A real train whistle (Train Horn is more technically accurate). Yesterday I removed these horns from Coach 404 (the frontmost coach on the Blue Bird train). When I got them home I promptly hooked them up to my air compressor, opened the valve and... Nothing happened!
Despite not yet having eaten supper I proceeded to tear the diaphram assemblies (the actual noisemaking part of the horn) and found one filled with mud dauber nests, one full of spider nests and the third and fourth just plain filthy. I quickly cleaned them up and tested them again, and one horn then started working. By then I was cold and tired, and gave up for the day.
Today when I got home I went back to work. I cleaned all four diaphrams with solvent to remove the oils and dirt from them before testing them one at a time. Once all three chimed nicely I went to work on repairing the bells (trumpets). Notice the silver band on the longest bell? Yes that's tape! That bell was literally broken in half when I recieved it, the tape is just there for testing purposes. Later I will solder the two halves back together.
In this post is a test video of the horn... Yes it really is that loud! Since one of the trumpets is missing I converted the horn assembly to a three-chime by plugging the air inlet to the damaged diaphram. The result: It sounds like there's a train rolling through Texas! Of course the REALLY impressive part is the fact that I tested this horn on my grandma's air compressor at 100 PSI, which is pretty close to the train brake pressure of 90 PSI. The small air tank can't flow enough air to keep up with one chime (horn assembly), let alone three. However this is not the case on the train, where the air supply is both less restricted and virtually unlimited!
Obviously I'm not done. I still need to see about straightening up the one bell, I need to solder up the other, and I need to strip off all of the old paint and repaint the whole thing, before fabricating a mounting bracket. Once all that's done it'll be ready to be mounted to Coach 408 (the rearmost coach on the train, which acts as the head-of-train when the train is backing up).

Introduction

Alas, I have created a blog for reasons other than conveniance in logging my home improvements... However my phylisophical reasoning against blogging holds true: This is NOT a "what I did today" blog, at least not in the strictest sense. This is my "hobby log." This blog will deal with my major hobbies (Blacksmithing, my truck, my lawn tractors, aquariums and whatever) as well as my volunteer work with the Toledo, Lake Erie and Western Railway. I get the feeling that more posts than not will be about the TLEW, however I don't see this as being a bad thing...

Just a note: The nickname "Hot Rod" is the nickname that my boss, Mark Woodring, uses for me at work...