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This is the seventeenth year I have written an annual report and every year as I look back on what we accomplished during the prior twelve months, I think it’s been one of the busiest years ever on the A & P. This year isn’t any different; it was a very busy year.
Most of our track has been on the ground for twenty plus years now and some of the lag screws are starting to work themselves loose, some ties have started to deteriorate and some splice bar bolts have loosened. We spent a great deal of time this year addressing these issues. We replaced some of the worst ties and lag screws, repositioned tie plates, trimmed rail junctions, serviced splice bars and gauged the rail.
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Instead of continuing to replace ties here and there, we started plans to replace all of our ground-contact ties in late 2021. You might think how long could that take. We have approximately 1950 regular ties in place and will be replacing 700 of them. We will also be replacing the 17 switch ties in each of our ten switches. Each tie has a minimum of four tie plates with lag screws and the switch ties have at least twice that number. It is a time-consuming process.
The type of acquisition that we cover under this caption is that of equipment and significant parts. We acquired many smaller parts this year from several sources. We acquired several E10 and G12 parts this year from Rick Nairn, Gerry Warner, Jerry Graves, Ed Janulionis and Ron Witt and several others and appreciate their assistance in these projects.
We acquired a much larger air compressor for the shop to run our bead blasting cabinet and air tools. It will get a great deal of use in the future.
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We acquired a four ton electric hoist for our gantry crane.
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We completely rebuilt 15 E10 trucks (5 power trucks, 8 coach trucks and 2 powered coach trucks) and 6 G12 trucks (1 power and 5 coach trucks). They received new bearings, new seals, new gears when needed, new bolts and new paint. We re-tired 32 E10 wheel hubs and had 20 brand new hubs cast.
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We replaced all the gaskets in the BRN engine we acquired for the G12 and also replaced the exhaust.
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The focus of our work this year was the restoration work on the two E10s and the G12. We did some 16 gauge running early in the year, but not nearly as much as usual.
The Phoenix had a detailed brass polishing job this year which took several hours. She also received routine annual maintenance.
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This year the Red River received detailed brass polishing. Routine annual maintenance was also performed.
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Like the Phoenix and the Red River, the Sandusky received a detailed brass polishing and routine annual maintenance.
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Our Wisconsin engine in no. 582 received a partial rebuild this year. The cylinders, heads and all internal components were cleaned thoroughly, new head and pan gaskets were installed and the carburetor was rebuilt. We also drained the gas out of the gas tanks and replaced it with new gasoline. We reinstalled the Wisconsin into no. 582 with our gantry and electric hoist. We also bought a new battery as the previous one was on its last legs.
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Other than routine maintenance, the track inspection car received very little attention this year and ran well.
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We are making significant progress on our E10 and G12 restoration projects.
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I had two seats upholstered one for the locomotive and one for the rear seat of the observation car.
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We fabricated a new battery tray, acquired a new engine tray for the Wisconsin engine and tracked down several other pieces that we needed. There remain a handful of parts we are missing, but I am still chasing and with the help of friends are close to either finding or fabricating everything that we need. We fabricated and mounted a new pilot, replaced two control handles, replaced the throttle rod, replaced both truck pins, replaced a cross-member, fabricated two seats, fabricated a new dash panel, and removed several broken bolts. We found a complete gasket kit for our BRN motor and replaced all.
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We found several more original trim pieces that we were missing.
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We have 5 original MT & RR Co. E10 32 volt electric motors; we will utilize the best two in two of our E10s. Dave has been acquiring the electrical components for the observation car and the locomotive. Except for the massive electric motor itself we are in pretty good shape. We have the original drivelines, but like the G12, will have new ones fabricated. The power trucks have been rebuilt and are wired and ready to install. We have all the switches and buttons for the instrument panel and have all of the handle ends for the exterior trim handles. We also have the hood horns. I had 5 E10 seats upholstered, three for the E10 locomotives and one for the rear seat of each observation car.
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We have acquired all of the trim parts for our four E10 coaches and the two observation cars including the door handle ends, rear side markers and lenses and observation car drumheads. I have the Lexan for the windows, but we will need to make patterns and cut the Lexan to size. The trucks have been rebuilt and are ready for installation.
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We acquired a couple more MT & RR Co. torque wrenches for our collection and upgraded another one. I had long sought an original MT & RR Co. torque wrench box and this year we were fortunate enough to obtain one (1938) along with its paperwork and the wrench that was in the box. The torque wrenches are rare enough, but the original cardboard boxes from 82 years ago are extremely rare. In close to 30 years of chasing down MTC items, I have only seen two of them. We are so happy to have these items in our MTC Collection.
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Dave purchased another collection of press release photos that included several early S16 photographs as well as photos of some other manufacturer’s equipment.
We added some additional vintage park train advertising to our collection.
We also expanded our collection of MTC and AH literature during the year and added to our park train catalog collection. I need to figure out how to display more of this material.
We built three large racks to display our 2 E10s and our G12 in the engine house.
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We modified one of our MTC crossing signals in the engine house and can now activate it (light and/or bell) by simply pushing a button.
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We acquired a NAD nose bezel and headlight.
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It gets a little difficult sometimes to separate the railroad related projects from those that are indirectly related but I think designing, assembling and outfitting the E10 and G12 display racks in the engine house are related to the A & P experience and require time and money that would otherwise go toward railroad operation.
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After a big travel year for Dave and I in 2019, Covid restricted everyone’s travel in 2020. The only railroads Dave and I visited this year were the:
We were only able to host a few friends and guests this year as a result of Covid. The majority of our visitors are local, or at least AZ and CA, and you know who you are, but we get guests from all over the country. This year the visitors who traveled the greatest distance before Covid shut everything down was the Thompson Family (owners of a G16 and S16) in Champaign, Illinois.
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Over 25 years we've had the chance to visit and photograph quite a few railroads, both private and public. We selected a few prints from our old photo albums (pre-2006) and scanned them. We also sorted through 15 years of digital photos and from both sources we created the four collages below. These 105 photos certainly don't include all the places we've visited or all the engines we've seen but are a good representation and invoke some fun memories.
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Over the years we've had the chance to meet and to talk with some of the pioneers of the hobby
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We can trace the origins of the Arizona and Pacific Railroad to a fall day in 1994. We attended a rare open house at Malcolm and Martha Mackey's Flagstaff and Middle Verde Railroad in Camp Verde, Arizona. Malcom allowed each of us to run the engine and we were hooked on Allan Herschell and Miniature Train Company equipment. We purchased our first S-16 a few months later in May of 1995.
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Plans:
Longer range plans include:
Wish List:
Our A & P website has been on the web now for 18 1/2 years. We finished 2020 with 149,171 unique hits since we established this site in June of 2002. We finished this year with 5,389 viewers by our counter which is 14.8 per day.
To our long-time viewers who have traveled with us on this almost 19 year internet journey thank you. The Arizona and Pacific Railroad celebrated its 25th anniversary in September of 2020; it is hard to believe that we have been at this that long.
Happy and safe railroading everybody!