SLLS Gets New President

I am pleased to announce that after six years serving as president of the St. Louis Live Steamers, I am no longer president! During the recent annual meeting, another member stepped forward to take the office, allowing me to step down. I had been encouraging people to put their name on the ballot to allow the rotation of responsibilities within the organization, during the last week Kirk put his name in. He'll make a fine president. I took the vice-president's office to help with the transition and I couldn't be happier!

A Lap Around the SLLS Track with Corey

Here's what a lap around the St. Louis Live Steamers track looks like. Taken during our "Boiler Blowdown" fun run 24-Oct-09, with Corey Adams at the throttle.

Birthday Cake in the park

Saturday found me in Kircher park with the rest of the active St. Louis Live Steamers moving rock to fill in several washouts from last Sunday's 3 inches of rain which cut off access to the mainline from the storage and turntable tracks. We have a public run this Saturday the 18th, so we needed to fill in the holes under the track so the engines could get to the mainline and run.

It was hot (90) and humid, near typical for St. Louis in July, and we had rented a skid loader and had Al's 4-wheeler to do the heavy lifting and moving. It didn't take long to work up a sweat just shoveling and tamping rock. By noon the repairs were complete.

Mom and Dad had made it to the house Friday evening. Mom joined Dad, Max and I out at the track in time for the monthly business meeting over lunch. Mom brought a cake out and after several attempts to light some decade-old matches as subsitute candles and a chorus of Happy Birthday, we all ate cake in the park.

Later that evening Mom, Dad and I joined my friends Al & Jonelle and Bill & Laurie W. and their 8 year-old daughter Trinity at the Trainwreck Saloon restaurant for dinner.

Family, Friends, Cake and Trains -- a pretty darn good birthday!

No Flood Threat from Rising Waters

Good news: there was an observed Meramec river crest at 18.6 feet 1am this morning, the river level is falling and the next crest tomorrow is predicted to be at 19 feet, just one foot over flood stage. So we are not at threat of flooding at the track. And no rain is in the 7 day forecast!

Plans for rebuilding the track will begin, first we will recover the parts from the trees and secure them while the roadbed is worked on this fall and over the winter.

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.


Click for more pictures

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.

Working on the Track gang

Working on the track gang

Weekend Update

The rain held off Saturday until after sunset allowing a full days work at the track. The fabric underlayment roll was located and with the help of a come-alone was winched up onto Al's trailer and driven back to SLLS with the 4-wheeler. The car barn was cleaned earlier in the week and was almost dry, the Shop barn was washed, rinsed and disinfected. I worked on the big Onan generator. The gas tank was dry (above the water line) but it appears an exhaust valve was open - there was water in the cylinders and some water in the crankcase when I drained the oil. Bill and I could not get the cylinders dry enough to get it to fire and I could not find any store which sold Ether. Not the rental place, local hardware store or the auto parts store. Is our government protecting us from ourselves again by banning the sale of ether?

Check this out: All the track was pulled back onto the roadbed, which was still compacted. We may hold to the April 26 first run date after all.

Al picked up his repaired riding car Sunday, opening up a space in the garage. I set up the sawhorses for a makeshift welding table and TIG'ed the coal bunkers together on the Crab locomotive. The burn marks are barely welds, but the sides hold together to the bottom.

Max is feeling fine. I got a tdap booster shot and my arm still hurts three days later. There are morning doves in the nest over the picture window. The maple trees have dropped their buds and will be leafing out any day now.

SLLS The flood water Recede

Picture by Peter Neidrauer
After breakfast this morning at a restaurant with a view of 'lake 141' (the normally dry highway 141 and interstate 44 intersection) we went out the the SLLS club facilities to view the flood damage.

The good news is the water rose only the bottom of the electric meter box on the outside, or just the bottom third of the containers. Our track has been lifted off the roadbed but is all intact and none of the roadbed was washed out. It looks like the only thing we lost was one roll of new fabric underlayment, which I did not see anywhere in the park. The skim of mud coating the floor and ground is nothing compared to the filth and muck I saw after the 1993 flood in Chesterfield. Our efforts last week paid off and on the whole the damages are minimal.



Now the cleanup begins.

Good News

Good News! The latest Eureka flood crest has been revised downwards to 40.7' around midnight tonight.

SLLS Track Flooded Friday

Photo by Sam Baudo
Photo by Sam Baudo
Sam B. reported 9:30am this morning the water was covering the top of the gate across the bridge at Kircher Park. Our track and the three years of effort to build are now underwater. The water is at the floor of the containers, with continued rise until Saturday afternoon.

Kircher Park Evacuation Thursday

It was a beautiful first day of spring and SLLS celebrated (sort of) by evacuating Kircher Park. Flat Creek, which was slowly draining when members arrived at noon, was no longer moving and had risen 5 or 6 inches to cover the bottom of the bridge I-beam by the time we left around 4. Evidence of the rising water was all around us. The road drains had filled with water, which was starting to creep out of them.

Thanks to all that helped: Ax and Marie K., Paul S., Sam B., George R., Bill & wife Linda W., Joel P., Rich E. and Peter & Nancy N.

All rolling stock, all electric tools, hand tools, items deemed valuable or hard to replace (like the wooden water tank) were loaded into cars, vans, trucks and a trailer and removed from the park.

Joel took Datum points with the transit for future Meramec River / Flat Creek water level correlations.

Rich E. brought his welder out and put a firm bead of 'metal glue' on all the container pad connection points to firmly secure them. Loose outdoor items which would float away were put inside the much emptier car barn container. The main power was again shut off at the breaker. The container doors were locked together, but ajar, to allow water in and minimize the risk of the containers floating away or worse, lifting the footers out of the ground.

Hope for the best (water only to the floors), maybe we'll avoid the worst (a 43' Meramec crest would be at the roof of the containers).

Flooding 10:30pm Tuesday

An update: "I wanted to share with you an update from this morning to the Kircher Park / Flat Creek flood situation. As of Tuesday evening, the National Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service revised their Eureka Memamec River forecast upward to predict a crest of 37 feet on Friday morning 7am. Although we still do not know what a water reading on the Meramec river would mean for Flat Creek and Kircher park, we decided to remove some key assets from the park while we had time and it was safe.

I'd like to thank Joel (and his van), Henry, Al, Ax and Marie, and help from my visiting parents Peter and Nancy, who came out in the rain for an inpromptu work session. We removed the key assets. Also thanks to Sam who earlier had turned the main breaker off.

Other items were moved from the floor to workbench tops and the plastic lumber under the switch bench was anchored with the placement of four pieces of 1.75" heavy-wall tubing on top of the pile, and securing other outside items.

It was observed that flat creek was a couple of inches from the bottom of the concrete road deck of the bridge (already covering most of the I-beams). There was standing water across the south end of the road and across the grass. The storm drains were no longer draining. At the northwest end of the track where the mainline/service curves start, the water was nearly at track level on both sides.

We shall see what the river will do...."
Denis

Flood Threats 10:55am Tuesday

It's been raining, hard, in the midwest Monday and Tuesday 18-Mar-08. When it rains hard in this area, the threat of flooding looms which prompted me, as President of the St. Louis Live Steamers and who has our track, equipment and tools in a known flood plain at Kircher Park, to send the following message out to the membership.

"This informational message is to let you know that because of the heavy rains, the Meramac river conditions are being closely watched in relation to river stage/flooding. As posted by the National Weather Service, the Meramac river is expected to crest at 25.5 feet Friday 21-Mar at 1pm at Eureka. Flood stage for this point is 18 feet. (source: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=lsx)

We know that when the Meramac river rises it will cause Flat Creek to back up. But we do not have a correlation between Meramac stage and the impact on Flat Creek. We have known the park area is in a flood plane, and have taken measures to minimize our risk exposure including elevating the containers off the ground and putting lot's of drain pipes under the track to minimize washouts."

Lucky I was off today with my visiting parents to catch what was going on.