More Water Troubles at the park

The remnants of hurricane Ike and the 5.5" of rain dropped across the area in the past nine hours once again bring heartbreak to the St. Louis Live Steamers. We have experienced another damaging flash flood, wiping the track off the roadbed and damaging the track itself in several places, more severely than any of the previous floods. We have experienced more washout in the northeast corner and the transfer table was blown off the tracks, but remains upright.


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And we have to keep an eye on the Meramec river at Eureka, forecast to crest at 28 feet on Tuesday morning 7am. I am hopeful we will not experience a backwater flood like in March, but will keep an eye on river. The revised forecast on Monday will tell.

It appears our operating season for this year has ended. I remain optimistic we will rebuild this fall and winter, this could be an opportunity to re-engineer the roadbed to make it more resilient to the moving waters.

There is good news to report: The containers are high and dry. It appears the water might have been a foot below the bottom of the containers. The power is on. The track pins work! Everywhere they were used the track stayed put!

And in other news, the John Deere lawnmower under the switch bench was drowned. If we can bring that gorilla Onan engine/generator back to life after a full drowning in March, a lawnmower should be no problem at all.