And progress there was!

The weekday crew completed relocating the remaining "small" materials that had been located in the north east corner of the locomotive restoration site.

This morning the crew was split into two groups.  One group gather tools and moved to History San Jose to push back SP1215.  Those that remained at the fairgrounds continued preparations to lift 2479.

After lunch the lift began.  Things progressed rather well until about 4PM when the right front corner jack began to malfunction.  The jack would rise about 1 to 2 inches and stop.  Several things were attempted to correct the problem without success.  We turned to a 20 ton hydraulic bottle jack to assist the 35 ton air jack and continued the lift.

The only other incident occurred when we had completed jacking at the front of the loco.  As crib materials were being stuffed under the front end main beam, the loco showed a very small amount of movement and it seemed to have come from the back end.  Investigation revealed one of the temporary crib timbers had split, but our crib design is such that there are multiple load bearing points.  If and in this case when one fails there are several other points that can bear the load.

With the locomotive at 70 inches above rail head and the time approaching 5PM, we decided to call it a day.  We will start again tomorrow, Sunday, at 8AM. With some luck, the wheels should be under the loco by quitting time.

The image shows the locomotive at 5PM Saturday Oct 25.

We had a very big crew today.  I don't think any one walked away with out some sore muscles.