Pittsburgh Shawmut and Northern Caboose

Getting ready to be loaded onto the truck.

     The year 1979 provided the Bucksgahuda and Western Railroad with the opportunity to acquire two Pittsburgh Shawmut and Northern cabooses.  The cabooses were built by the Russel Snowplow Company located in Ridgway, Pennsylvania .  One of the cabooses went to the B&W while the other one went to the Teaberry & Southern Railroad.  (The Teaberry and Southern Railroad is another two foot gauge railroad on the other side of town in St. Marys, Pennsylvania.)  The caboose was transported to the Bucksgahuda and Western Railroad by a flat bed truck.  The B&W crew then spent countless hours working to restore to the caboose to how it would have looked like when it was in active service on the Pittsburgh Shawmut and Northern Railroad.  



Making it's way to the B&W

Being placed at it's new permanent home.











Before the new paint job in 2007

     The repairs held nicely but the paint began to appear really faded in 2007.  Around this time, a crew member was working on her Gold Award for Girl Scouts and decided to take on the task of repainting the caboose.  After scraping all the old paint off, a new coat was applied and the letters and numbers on the caboose were adjusted to be more historically accurate.  In order to preserve the caboose better for many years to come, a roof was built over top of the caboose for some protection from the weather. 

All the old paint scraped off.

             


Brand new coat of paint.

The end result.

First three pictures provided by William Bauer, last four pictures taken by Fred Bauer

10/18/14 Motorcars and Shay

The newly purchased M19 motorcar

   The crew that showed up on 10/18/14 were very productive.  Their main project for the day included moving a newly purchased Farimont M19 Motorcar into the main shop to be rebuilt and made runnable again.  The motorcar is going to need new roller bearings, a few other  replacements and a new coat of paint.  "Roller bearings are a machine element that constrains relative motion and reduces friction between moving parts to only the desired motion" (from Wikipedia).  Roller bearings are similar to ball bearings except they use small cylindrical rollers instead of balls.  All this work needed on the Farimont M19 Motorcar will sure keep the crew busy for a while. 

The M9 motorcar waiting for a head gasket replacement

   If your remember from last Sunday (10/12/14) when the Bucksgahuda and Western Railroad went on a motorcar ride, one of the motorcars did not work.  In addition to that, the Fairmont M9 Motorcar failed to start for the part of the return trip after a short break on the ride.  The crew figured out that it malfunctioned because of a blown head gasket.  In order to prepare to replace the blown head gasket, the crew removed the gasket yesterday (10/18/14) to make for an easy replacement when the new gasket comes in.  

An example of what the flues look like on a shay

    
    
   Finally, the crew finished off the day by cleaning out the flues of the Shay that the Bucksgahuda and Western Railroad owns.  A flue is a long pipe for smoke and waste gases produced by a steam engine or shay.  There are several flues in a steam engine or shay that need to be cleaned out because excess ash accumulates in them.  Cleaning out the flues is one of the major steps of getting the Shay ready for winter.   

 

First two pictures taken by Scott Bauer, last one is from Google