Watch our Sweet Creek in Action!
Today we feature a video by Bob Dickson of the steam engine trials at the Golden Horse Live Steamers track last Sunday!
Click on the video to watch her perform!
Click on the video to watch her perform!
The Sweet Creek Comes to Life!
Click on each picture for a closer look!.
With our miniature railroad track construction moving along quickly in Roundhouse Park the need to check out our new steam locomotive on an existing railroad with a real load became a priority. On Sunday morning we loaded out from the museum for a visit to our friends at Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers at the Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology. Despite a little rain early in the day we had a great afternoon and after a short period of technical adjustment we pulled trainloads of passengers for several hours. The locomotive runs very well indeed and is a credit to the team of TRHA volunteers who assembled the components from Roll Models (RMI).
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Posting by Michael Guy; Pictures by Russ Milland
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Another Great Work Day at Roundhouse Park!
Click on each picture for a closer look!
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We had a great turnout of TRHA volunteers yesterday. It was pretty hot and sunny outside but everyone worked hard from 8:00 a.m. right through to 3:30 p.m. so a lot was accomplished. In the picture at the left above, we see some of the crew respendent in our new saftey vests in front of #6213.
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We began the day by shifting the yellow work platform for the restoration contractors who have now started blast cleaning the wood inside stall 16 as shown in the picture in middle above.
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The team then moved to our highest priority initiative at the moment, track construction, which took the rest of the day. It is a substantial job to lay track using 10 pound per yard rail. There is a learning curve involved in bending such heavy rail around a curve as shown in the picture at the left below! But we did make good progress today. We were also able to ballast yesterday's track work as shown in the middle picture below. The track is starting to looks very attractive!
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In the right hand picture below, we find an unusual and very heavy track mintenance car which uses pendulums to detect track that is not level and to set grades. This car was kindly lent to the THRA by the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers in Hamilton, Ontario.
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The technicalities of crossing standard-gauge 100 pound per yard mainline track with 7-1/4" gauge 10 pound per yard track were solved this week in a nice solid and inexpensive way as reported in an earlier news post. The fact remains that it takes time to build such a crossing and we have nine to do! But thanks to having also climbed the learning curve here, it is just cut-and-weld from here on so progress will be much faster.
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The Sweet Creek locomotive piping was reassembled this afternoon and we ended the day by lifting the locomotive and tender off the assembly stand ready for transport. Today (Sunday) we loaded up the Sweet Creek on a pair of trailers and took it to the Golden Horseshoe Live Steamers miniature railway track in Hamilton to run our first trial runs so that we can confidence that we are ready to operate once our trackwork is complete at the Roundhouse. More pictures and video will be posted tomorrow of this milestone event.
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Posting by Michael Guy; Pictures by James Rasor
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Track Laying Begins in Earnest!
Click on each picture for a closer look!
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Now that the contractors have prepared some of the roadbed for the miniature railway, TRHA crews have now begun to install the railway track itself. After some planning and preparations on Thursday, the crew laid about 80 feet of track include the lead track from the turntable (as shown at the left above and in the middle picture). In the picture at right, we see that they have begun to install one of the crossings which allow the 7 1/4" gauge track to cross 4' 8 1/2" mainline track. We know of no other miniature railway that crosses mainline track in the world so perhaps this is a first.
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Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Lance Gleich
Removing the Switch Lever Assembly from Cabin D
Click on each pictures for a closer look!.
As noted in earlier news items, Tom Murison is charged with restoring Cabin D. Tom hired McCulloch Moving, the firm that moved #6213, to to lift the lever frame out of Cabin D. In the photo at the left above, we see the lever frame assembly being lifted out. In the other two pictures, we see the frame being offloaded at the offsite location where the frames will be restored. Cabin D restoration will be completed after the mechanism is replaced as the entire west end of the building had to be removed to provide a "door" through which to remove the frame.
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Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by Tom Murison
Inside the Cab of #6213
Click on each picture for a closer look!.
With the arrival of #6213 at the John Street Roundhouse, access to the cab is much easier. In the two pictures at the left above, we find volunteers working in the cab and also experiencing what it felt like to be in the engineer's seat of $6213. In the right hand two pictures we see the complex array of valves and other control systems used to manage the operations of a steam locomotive. Once restored completely the "backhead: (which is what the back of the firebox/boiler that you see here is called) will look even more complex as many parts were stored safely away while the engine resided in the CNE grounds to protect them from potential vandalism. These parts have yet to be reinstalled on the backhead.
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Posting by Russ Milland; Pictures by James Rasor and Stephen Gardiner
The Service Racks See the Light of Day
Click on each picture for closer look! .Recently, TRHA teams tackled the task of moving the service racks out of the Roundhouse in order to allow the renovations to proceed without impediment. These service racks were used to access the sides of engines for light maintenance work. In the above photos, we find Ellwell the Crane hard at work moving the service racks and also our work tables. In the photo below, we had a fine shot of the roundhouse and the turntable taken from on top of #6213's tender.
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Posting by Russ Milland; Photos by Lance Gleich, James Rasor and Richard White
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Multi-tasking on a Busy Father's Day Weekend!
Click on each picture for a closer look!.
It was a miserable wet day at the roundhouse but with a little juggling of the priority list and fourteen of us on hand on Saturday and three briefly on Sunday, we got plenty done anyway. In no particular order here are the results:
- #6213 has its rear steam line reattached and the wiring has been repaired so the headlight, marker lights and number board lights all work again. In the above middle picture we see the rear light shining. This is also the first day in 49 years when it rained that she didn't get wet!
- The Sweet Creek miniature loco is finished and ready for a burner and steam test. We also received TSSA approval for the boiler last week as well so all is moving well here. In the picture at below right, we find the team discussing progress on the Sweet Creek.
- 30 feet of heavy steel miniature track for the north side paved area is welded up and ready to lay and we re-marked the correct alignment for it opposite stall 10. The first miniature railway track leading away from the roundhouse and turntable was put down as shown in the two pictures at the left below.
- Track 35 is clear of vehicles leaving the field clear for Pine Valley to complete final landscaping from stall 32 all the way to the east side of track 37.
- Our last original Sellers pressure washer has been removed from a stall 17 pillar for safe keeping during renovations.
- We almost completed bolting down an 8" x 8" white oak timber required tofinish the pit rim fence foundation but safety concerns of running electrical power tools in the rain stopped us on Saturday. On a sunny Sunday, the timber bit for the fence foundation was bolted down nicely and waterproofed as per the picture at the above right.
- We completed laying the necessary thirty feet of miniature track to allow Pine Valley to proceed on Monday.
- Last but not least we moved all fifty-six feet of steel work benches and the large work platform back inside and off the patio area.
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Railways Appeared in Toronto in 1852!
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The recent movement of steam locomotive No. 6213 from the Exhibition Grounds to Roundhouse Park echoes one of the most important events in Toronto's early railway history. Construction on the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron, Toronto's first railway, began in 1852. Since there was no locomotive factory in existence in Canada at the time, the OS&H ordered their first engine from the United States.
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Built by the Portland Company in Portland, Maine, the engine was named the "Lady Elgin", in honour of the wife of the governor-general, the Earl of Elgin. She had turned the first sod of the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railway in October 1851 on the site of today's InterContinental Hotel at Front and Simcoe Streets.
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Four days after being delivered to Toronto from Portland, Maine, the "Lady Elgin", the first steam locomotive to run in Canada West (Ontario), began operating at Queen's Wharf (Lakeshore Boulevard & Bathurst Street) while a large crowd of onlookers cheered the event. In 2009, 6213 passed within a few yards of this location on its June 4 journey from the Exhibition Grounds to Roundhouse Park.
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The OS&H was unhappy with the extra costs incurred by customs duties as well as shipping the locomotive across Lake Ontario and sought a local builder for its next locomotive. The Lady Elgin was mostly used in construction work on the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railway. The engine proved underpowered and troublesome and was relegated to secondary operation by the time the railway began revenue service in 1853.
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A local foundry owner named James Good decided that there was money to be made supplying steam locomotives to the burgeoning railway industry and the Toronto Locomotive Works was established at Yonge and Queen Streets, about where St. Michael's Hospital is today.
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On April 16, 1853, the "Toronto", was completed at Good's foundry. This was the first steam locomotive built in Canada, and probably the first anywhere in the British Empire outside of Great Britain. The 4-4-0 weighed almost 30 tons and was 26 feet in length without her tender. Her four driving wheels were five and a half feet in diameter. On April 18, the "Toronto" was moved outside the locomotive works onto Queen Street for display to an appreciative public, who came from all over the city and suburbs to see it.
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Just as with the movement of 6213 in 2009, it was decided to move the tender first, followed by the locomotive on a subsequent day. On April 19, 1853, the works crew spent all day loading the Toronto's tender onto a horse-drawn float outside the foundry at Queen and Yonge Streets and hauling it down Yonge to the nearest tracks on the south side of Front Street. The TLW hoped that the movement of the locomotive itself the following day would be less cumbersome since they planned on rolling it along rails laid in the street.
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On April 20, the ponderous journey of the steam locomotive "Toronto" began. The 30-ton locomotive was far too heavy for the horse-drawn float used to move the tender the previous day. As in 2009, the locomotive would take a different route than the tender. Temporary track was laid relay-fashion 100 feet at a time and the engine was crow barred into motion west along Queen Street. At York Street the Toronto was swiveled south towards Front Street. This laborious process occupied almost a week, much to the fascination of Torontonians who had never seen such an enormous machine. People gathered along the route to cheer the progress of the locomotive through the streets, just as enthusiastic railfans would stay up all night to pace the progress of 6213 in 2009. Fortunately today's enthusiasts didn't have to wait as long. The Toronto didn't complete its week-long journey until April 26, 1853. For the next three weeks, the railway broke in the locomotive and the engineers became familiar with its operation before it was sent out on its first revenue trip.
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On May 16, 1853, the most historic day in Toronto railway history the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railway initiated revenue railway service for the first time. The wooden depot was located close to where the eastern entrance to Union Station is today. The locomotive "Toronto" pulled the four car mixed train consisting of a coach, a combine and two boxcars to Machell's Corners, 30 miles north of the city. A year later the community was renamed Aurora.
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The Toronto Locomotive Works (TLW) was seriously hindered by its inconvenient location a mile north of the rail corridor. After unsuccessfully trying to relocate to the waterfront, the TLW abandoned the railway business in 1859 after building 23 locomotives.
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Here are the captions for each of the photos with #1 being the photo at the upper left and #6 being the photo at the lower right.
#1- The "Lady Elgin", the first locomotive to operate in Ontario, some years after it was delivered.
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#2- The "Toronto" as it appeared in 1853 when it was built. There are no known photographs of the engine in its early years since photography was in its infancy in the early 1850's.
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#3- The movement of the "Toronto" through the streets of the city. Although evocative, this romanticized image is inaccurate. The tender was moved separately and the locomotive is shown as it appeared after it was modified years later.
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#4- This engraving shows a Toronto Locomotive Works engine in 1855 being hauled by horse teams past St. Lawrence Hall on King Street to the Grand Trunk Railway shops near the Don River. It would appear by this time that the foundry moved the boiler separately on a horse-drawn float and completed construction of the locomotive after it was delivered to the railway.
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#5- The locomotive Toronto as it appeared in 1880, shortly before it was scrapped. We can only belatedly mourn the loss of what would undoubtedly be the most precious artifact of the railway era in any museum in this country, the first locomotive ever built in Canada.
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#6- The Northern Railway (renamed OS&H) shops around 1860 looking southwest from Spadina. A locomotive can be seen outside the shops on the right. There's a possibility this was the "Lady Elgin", which was reportedly out of service by this time.
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By Derek Boles, TRHA Historian
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Tucking in #6213 for the Night!
.Click on each picture for a closer look!
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In the past day or so, we expended considerable time and effort to do a trial-fit of #6213 in the three stalls allocated to the museum. The result was somewhat surprising against our expectations. The track we used was stall 15 because the track in stall 16 is partly plated over with steel and stall 17 was inaccessible due to the work platform being temporarily stored just outside. This put #6213 against the east wall of this segment of the roundhouse. On this track, we had expected that side of the engine would be largely inaccessible for any ongoing work. This turned out not to be the case. We backed the engine in with the tender to the south (not the correct orientation for work on the engine but better for display purposes) and the engine and tender all but disappeared in there.
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The roundhouse building is very deceptive. You wouldn't think a loco that big would start to look small in there but it does just that. Everywhere outside it dominates the landscape but inside you could easily miss it. There is plenty of room between it and the wall for all normal light maintenance including removal of valve-gear components and anything light enough not to require lifting gear. Thus augurs well for working on other equipment on that track as well.
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Posting by Michael Guy; Pictures by Dave Wetherald
#6213 on the Move - The Videos!
Click on each video to watch it!
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Here is a video by Dave Wetherald showing #6213's tender being moved to a radial track at the orundhouse.
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Here is another video of #6213 on the turntable as found at YouTube
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Finally, click here to watch a very innovative video produced by the Toronto Star whose staff followed the move of #6213 all night.
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Posting by Russ Milland
#6213 is Now a Roundhouse Resident!
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At 6:15 a.m. this morning a TRHA crew arrived at the roundhouse to fire up the turntable and #1 to move #7020 and #7069 off the turntable in preparation for the offloading of #6213 to our trackage by Laurie McCulloch Movers. In due course, #6213 rolled down a track ramp and stopped half on and half off the ramp necessitating a pull by our CLC Whitcomb locomotive #1 to complete the move.
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We took a few minutes to put #6213 without its tender onto a radial track to see if there really was room for it but this was regrettably not possible. With the stoker screw up against the door the front coupler still fouled the turntable. Our next order of business was to couple up #6213 to its tender, which we did. Then we moved the whole locomotive on to the turntable for a test fit with both #6213 and #1 on the turntable at the same time. We had more luck with this and it is indeed possible to rotate the turntable with the CLC-Whitcomb #1 and #6213 and tender all coupled together on board without harming the pit rim fence.
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Posting by Michael Guy; Pictures by Dave Wetherald
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Progress Report On the Cabin D Restoration
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The restoration of Cabin D involves quite a balancing act. The lever machinery is located, for the most part, on the second floor. This mass of metal, weighing over six tons, is supported by a wood frame building that has deteriorated in the hundred odd years since it was fabricated. The restoration plan calls for the machinery to be removed and taken off-site for restoration, while the wooden building is reconstructed as a heritage building on-site. The two will be reunited just prior to completion.
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The immediate work being done is best described by our master builder Tom Murison in his recent job report as of June 11th, 2009:
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"We finally fitted the post repair at the southwest corner of Cabin D. (upper left picture) The entire building, it turns out, was sawn off and lowered to the ground at some point, probably when the building was moved initially from the Bathurst Yard, presumably in order to clear some low obstruction.The saw cuts were made at the window sills and covered by the replacement of the original trim. This made the wall repairs more difficult than expected. We had to tie the building to a heavy nearby object and then jack the opposite wall progressively in order to lift the roof, walls and second floor. The internal trusses at the second floor could not be removed or the entire floor would have hinged laterally.
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We have now completed the installation of the north sill repair, the north west corner post (which is tenoned into the upper half of the post, and stub tenoned into the sill), and we have fitted the new west sill in between both long sill ends. (middle picture above).
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We also sistered new joists to the five joists at the west end of the structure, and will complete the resupport of this portion of the floor tomorrow. We connected the new supporting truss (pictures at the above right and below left) to the posts that are carrying the cast iron table of the Saxby and Farmer machinery We will be tying this truss to the double wooden beam to which the machinery is bolted, so that it can be rolled out in one piece. We do not want to take out the west floor. We have calculated that the machine has approximately 44,000 cubic inches of cast iron (25.67 cubic feet or .719 cubic metres). Since cast iron is almost the same density as steel (7,850 kilograms per cubic metre), this would give a weight of around 5,642 kilograms for the machine, or about 12,400 pounds. This is close to my initial guess of 6 to 8 tons, and should include the wooden beams plus any cribbing required to package the machinery for the trip.
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By using tension on the south west corner and jacking the north west corner we pulled the north west corner 5 inches to the south, and raised the first and second floors at that end by about the same amount. We then lowered the entire steel runner of the "sled" at the north west corner by about 3-1/2" to make the north side nearly level. (middle picture below). Needless to say, all the jacking and severe contortions that the framing was put through caused some members to split and crack, notably the end joist over the west doorway. The squirrels decided that their "tree" was about to fail, so moved out around 1:00 p.m. yesterday, never to be seen again. The cat also thought better of returning to wherever the heck she lives in the building.
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At the end of the day we covered the west wall with new 3/4" plywood to ensure that nothing else moves in tonight. The cables will remain until tomorrow to ensure that the building has a peaceful night of recovery from surgery. Please cancel the highball express on that line. (lower right picture)
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As soon as the machine is cribbed and ready to lower, we will start removing the second floor to allow the machine to be lowered for the move."
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Posting by Orin Krivel; Report and photos by Tom Murison
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