T his will cover the last two weeks since I was out of town during last weekend.

     Wednesday (8/18) Warren Olt was Dispatcher with Carl Thistel and Harry Gesser as crew and were host to two tour groups.

     Saturday (8/22) Ben Bates was Dispatcher with John Diefenbach and Tom Phillips as crew. The number of visitors was average and no problems were reported.

     Sunday (8/23) Ray Cannon was Dispatcher with Dennis Falter and Carl Thistel as crew. The small number of crew matched the small number of visitors. At some time during the day the Witt, 6119, decided to blow an air gasket and was taken out of service. Other than the Witt, things seemed to go well.

     Wednesday (8/26) Warren Olt was Dispatcher with Ben Bates and Harry Gesser as crew.

     Saturday (8/29) started out with four crews working. The first crew worked on the Witt's air leak, the second crew on a broken insulator at 28th street, the third crew painting shelves for the G scale shelf layout and the forth crew working on the Visitor Center Air Conditioning.

     The Witt air leak turned out to be more difficult than we had expected. Ed Amrhein and I had made a gasket over a month ago and thought we had a good long term solution (see 7/19 update for details). After we had made the gasket we had found the gasket we had bought over 10 year ago. The gasket was in good shape so we thought that it would be an easy fix to replace our homemade one.

     As it turns out, each time we tried to use the gasket, it would leak when pressure was applied. The gasket was stretching out and letting the air leak by. We later realized that it was thicker than the one we had made before and that it would stretch easier than the thinner one. The temporary solution was to put a large clamp around the unit to prevent the gasket from bulging out and leaking.

     After careful inspection it became apparent that the methods used to install the air unit requires a much thinner and harder gasket that is normally used with the other air brake units. Using the clamp seemed to work and we planed to get the proper thickness gasket for next weekend.

     Mark Hurley spent the morning and part of the afternoon painting the shelves that will be used for the G scale trolley layout.

     Rick Williams worked on adjusting the air flow to even the temperatures through out the building.

     Dave Crow, Dennis Yeager, Rick Obbink and Ed Amrhein got the Line Truck out and replaced a broken span insulator at 28th street. After repairing the insulator they started to sort insulators and prepare the north end of the 22nd street freight shed for a futher span wire to replace a line pole that will be too close to the second track.

     It was just about lunch and I had to change into my uniform, as I was Dispatcher. Dennis Falter, David Baynes and Cath La Costa were the crew. While we did not have a large number of visitor's, we did have one from Japan and one From Hanover Germany. During the afternoon Bob Bond came in and worked on the O gauge trolley layout.

     Sunday (8/30) Rick Williams was Dispatcher with Dan Lawrence and Mike Citro as crew. On the Witt's first trip the gasket started to leak, so much for our temporary fix. The Witt was removed form service.

     David Crow came down and prepared the next set of insulators and spans so that next Saturday we will be able to start work on the overhead early and hopefully be done before the regular revenue service starts.

John