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A few words from Steam Engine Row and our June show
Chuck Goebel
Steam Engine Row is fortunate to have some very loyal supporters who make it possible for us to progress and put on a
worthwhile show. We are very grateful to them, and they deserve the appreciation and thanks of all of us.
For the past sixteen years, we have been using Culligan water softeners to remove the scale-forming minerals from
our boiler feedwater supply. This time, we got our softeners from Culligan of North County, whose office is in Escondido.
As with our former Culligan suppliers, who have moved to Miramar, they generously donated the use of the softeners, and
so I picked them up at their plant and brought them to the Museum and returned them when the show was over. The quality
and performance of those softeners was very impressive. My personal thanks to all the folks at Culligan for their
generosity and good service.
Pat Mackin and Richard Eckert come from Prescott, Arizona, for every show. The work that they have done to improve our
installation and help with the operation during the show has been truly amazing. They arranged for us to get the two
“new” boilers that are located in the boiler house that they built a couple of years ago. After the June show was over,
they stayed on for rest of the week and installed a lot of new pipe and electrical work. They have also done a lot of
other valuable work on Museum equipment outside of Steam Engine Row. You have all seen them driving the old green
Fairbanks-Morse tractor in the parades. They are among the few who really know how to persuade that old beast to
run properly. Pat is the one with the shiny hard hat and a full beard, and Rich is the big guy with the soft hat and
the blue shirt. It would take a lot of space to list all of their good works; we could not make it without their help.
During the afternoon on Saturday the 16th, our boiler feed pump decided to stop pumping because the water end of
one of the piston rods broke off. We had to shut down for a while. Pat and Richard and Kent Graham jumped into the job
and pulled the pump apart. Removed the broken rod, and then removed one of the rods from a “parts” pump. Did some lathe
work to put a correct taper on the end of it, and got it back together in record time. It certainly is good to have people
with skill and “know how” in a situation like that.
George Bohn was busy overhauling the fly-ball governor off our Vilter Corliss engine. It had been exposed to the weather
for so long that the main shaft had seized up in the main housing, and getting it apart was a big job. Rudy Dremely
provided some of the muscle to operate the twelve-pound sledgehammer that eventually persuaded it to move out of the housing.
The whole governor weighs around two hundred pounds, and that’s an awkward beast to handle.
Captain Ron Mealy came on Sunday the seventeenth, sharpened knives and entertained our visitors with sea stories and
rope tricks. We thank him very much for his good company and help.
Randy Staheli, who with his wife Marcella, came down from Utah, helped with all the chores. We look forward to his
return for the Fall show. Randy does a great job of cooking up a fine stew in his big Dutch oven and deep-frying those
delicious scones that Marcella makes. Mac McKenzie helped out with the boiler firing and keeping us laughing with
his quirky sense of humor. William Stickney, who was not even in his teens when he first came around and astonished
all of us with his maturity, knowledge, good manners, and friendly attitude, came to the show on the second weekend,
and pitched in and helped everyone. Thanks William we enjoyed your visit!
We are getting close to having our “new” boilers ready to operate. The electrical wiring is complete, we have the
feed pumps and their required plumbing all hooked up, new safety valves and venting pipes installed, and the fuel
lines are connected to the burners. We have test-fired them and know that they will run properly.
However, before we got the boilers from the Yavapai Regional Medical Center in Prescott, they were being used at a
low pressure and temperature that didn’t require as much fuel as would be needed to run them at the full design
capacity that we need to operate our engines. So, we are getting larger capacity burner nozzles that will allow
the boilers to do the job they were designed to do. We hope to have them going for our Fall show.
We will,
of course, need to have the boilers re-certified for operation in California by Bill Rozokat, our Hartford boiler
inspector, before we go into full operation. All things considered, it was a good show. We had some problems,
but we fixed them. We met a lot of nice people, many of whom were first time visitors. We hope that they will
come back again and again. If you’d like to play with steam engines, come and see us. We promise that you will
have an ample opportunity to get your hands and clothes dirty, and that you will be very welcome. The pay is
lousy, but the company is great! Thanks for your interest and friendship! Auf Wiedersehen!
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