| More
Powerful Steam Shovel Uses |
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Shop photo of my Powerful Steam
Shovel hooked up to my Acme Wagon, which was modified with the
addition of seats and back and head rests to make it legal to
drive on the sidewalks to take us to the ice cream store at the
gas station around the corner and down the street.
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| The photo above shows
Sniffy, Rusty and me with 2 bucks worth of cash, headed up the
driveway on our way to the ice cream store at the gas station
down the street and around the corner.
Unfortunately, something jammed
in the remote control of the Stupid Steam Shovel, and it took
off right up the side of a big rock, and we got wrecked reel bad
and I almost lost the 2 bucks worth of cash when the wind blew
right after the wreck, which is shown in the photo
below.
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Sparky's
Back Yard
Page 5
by Sparky |
| The
Split Rock City Railroad |
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Featuring
Construction and Operational Information About the
Railroad |
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Split
Rock City, July
31, 2003.
Construction
continues with the design and implementation of more retaining
walls. Lots of them! Jim
saw a retaining wall along some bike trail, and it was just mad e
out of wire boxes filled with rocks, so he bought a roll of
1/4" hardware cloth screen and cut it into pieces about
6" square. Then he cut out the corners so it ended up
like a plus sign, like shown in the picture at right. Then
he made a little box that he could put each piece of cut screen
into and then hit it with another cut piece of wood to bend it
into almost a box. Then he just bent the wires that were
sticking out of each side so the box would stay together and make
the retaining wall boxes filled with gravel shown in photo #1
below. Photo
2 shows a stone wall that will hold up the upper track, and the
wooden cribbing below it will retain the roadbed for the lower
track. Photo
3 shows my Powerful Steam Shovel excavating the big hole for the
big, 2-track trestle, while photo 4 shows the completed
excavation. Photo
5 shows me giving Sniffy a lesson in how to use your cowboy gun
for a hammer while driving nails to complete the big trestle. Photo
6 shows the big trestle after installation, and my Powerful Steam
Shovel has just completed the backfilling operation so it will not
move around when heavy trains begin running over it. Photo 7
shows Sniffy and me resting on the back of the Powerful Steam
Shovel after the work was completed, while we were getting ready
to dig out for the cut tile retaining wall that will support one
of the tracks. Photo 8 is an overview to better show all the
work we have completed due to the help of the Powerful Steam
Shovel. Photos
9 and 10 show some of the retaining walls made from tiles that
have been sawed into little blocks, while 11 and 12 show the
Diamond blade wet saw that we use to cut larger tiles into those
little blocks. |
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| That's
about it fer now. I'll have
some more pitchers in a couple of days and then I'll add them to
the album on the next page, that's not written yet. --Sparky |
|
 Sparky's
Ratings of Batteries |
| My Powerful Steam
Shovel uses 4 AA Batteries, and it does pretty good with
them. It gets about one of Gloria's wheelbarrow loads of
dirt per set of batteries.
I decided to see if any other
brands of batteries perform any better and last longer, so here
is what I found out:
All 4 brands that I know about performed about the
same as far as speed of digging was concerned, but 1 brand
seemed to be able to load more dirt before running out of
lecktrick lecktrick-city power.
If I could name the brands, or if
the manufacturers was willing to pay me some cash to brag about
their batteries, maybe I could tell you the names, but that is
not the case, so jest let me tell you that the best one loaded
about 1 Gloria wheelbarrow and 3 Sparky wheelbarrows.
2 other brands loaded about 1
Gloria wheelbarrow.
The worst brand, which I found 4
of them in the parking lot at the grocery store, only loaded
about 2 Sparky wheelbarrows, so fer that reason I would
recommend against wasting your time even picking up any of those
you happen to find in any parking lot.
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