April 1, 2009

The snow is rapidly melting here in the Valley and rusty rails are peeking through the snow cover. This is the only time of year that you will see heavily rusted rail on our active track, this time between snow melt and our first operating weekend. Opening day for the 2009 season is just two and a half weeks away and it’s almost time to start polishing the rails!

The new dining car has been named HATTIE EVANS. Work continues on the car on a daily basis. At the present time, the heating and air conditioning contractor has been busy installing these systems. The 120 gallon propane tank is just about ready to be installed and final demo of unneeded items from the car has been completed. There is a lot of work to do on this project.

We received the rebuilt trucks for #573 back from the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Derby shops on March 17. They were returned to us from Derby on two trucks owned by Stewart’s Heaving Hauling out of South Portland, ME. Taillon Crane Service was here to lift the trucks off of the trailers and to place them back on the track and then to lift the 573 back onto her trucks. There was a delay while our crew replaced one of the traction motor air duct boots and then we discovered that the special brake lever for the hand brake had been placed in the wrong position on the rear truck. It took only about ten minutes or so to swap that to the correct position and then the heavy lifting was done! The traction motor leads and air brake connections still have to be put back together and the air components have to be reinstalled (after periodic maintenance at Pittsburgh Airbrake Co.) and then 573 will be ready to run again. We thank the MM&A shop crew for a fist class job.

This year's schedule calls for conventional train service on weekends and RDC service on weekdays during the month of May. Once we arrive in June and the dining car Chocorua is open for business the conventional consist will operate daily with the RDC providing charter service as needed and also filling in as a coach when extra capacity is called for.

Steam engine #7470 is scheduled to run daily again this year beginning Saturday, July 25, through the end of August and then will be out again from mid-September to mid-October. We hope that there will be plenty of passengers this season to ride behind her!

The floor of the North Conway Station has received a couple of coats of polyurethane and looks very good, and the outside benches have been cleaned up and painted as well. The balls from the ball signal were badly rusted and so they are being repaired over at the shop.

Thank you for your support and interest in the Conway Scenic Railroad.

ALWAYS EXPECT A TRAIN!

Paul Hallett