SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California State Railroad Museum and its support group, the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, have launched an effort to restore Santa Fe steam locomotive No. 1010, a 2-6-2 built by Baldwin in 1901, for use on the museum’s Sacramento Southern excursion railroad.

The project — the largest steam restoration project undertaken by the museum since its opening in 1981 — is described in the current edition of the Museum Foundation’s “On Track” magazine.

Union Pacific’s historic steam locomotive Big Boy No. 4014 heads west after leaving Evanston, Wyo., on the way to Ogden as part of the celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad’s Completion on May 8, 2019. Big Boy No. 4014 was coupled with Living Legend No. 844 steam locomotive for the trip. (Photo: Steve Griffin, Deseret News)

Sure, lots of good memories with that job. I had three guys working with me on it. One of our best crews over the years. The owner was a good friend- straight up diamond guy to work for; we did some great jobs with him.

I cut all the timbers in the shop and the guys assembled on site. We didn’t have a crane or anything because we were over the water, so it was heave-ho all day, and the beer-ho at night-haha.

With my inability to huff the big stuff anymore, we’ve closed down the cabinet shop but we’ll still be offering design and project management services. I’m just not able to do the heavy lifting anymore. My last kitchen had 4,300# of plywood/lumber on it. Kicked my ass. I’m done. Time for a desk job!!

Thanks for providing a great source of comedy/interesting stuff/outright fucked upness for us all. 

Don’t mind me sent the three trestle bridges above and this is what he asked:

“Hey Kevin,

“Did you ever think of doing “Old Train Trestle Bridges” on Thursday? The engineering of these old structures, especially pre-1900 is fascinating.” I had to agree. I have included trestle bridges, viaducts, round houses and turntables before, but not in a separate post. I liked the idea and like DMM, I marvel and enjoy the engineering and fortitude and can-do mentality of building these type of projects without modern equipment. So, I have started a folder and began collecting these types of pictures to use on the Old Train Thursday to spice it up a bit. I included this pics today to kind of announce it.

In ending the email, DMM said this:

“As a lifelong builder, I can’t imagine the work put into these. When I lived in Maine, I used to look for covered bridges on weekend road trips. Not many of those left. I built a timber frame boathouse in Maryland that kind of gave me a feel of what it must have been like to build over rivers or canyons-one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever done. I built the windows/doors and we put a slate roof on it. It measured 32′ x 56′. We lost a shitload of tools overboard on that one!”