Matt and Lou gently heating a pinion gear in preparation to sweating it onto the gear shaft for the middle truck. Keith is shooting it with a temperature gun. Trial aluminum castings for the horn brasses, which are the bearings that surround the trunions on out skew bevel gears such as this one showing, are now in our possession. The foundry will get the OK to cast them in bronze AFTER the size and shape of the trial castings are confirmed (or denied) at the next work session. Our pattern maker tests most of his patterns and tooling in his backyard aluminum foundry prior to releasing them to commercial foundry for the production run. In the background, note the trial aluminum brake shoe holder casting resting on the locomotive frame behind Lou.

Photo by Ed Miller