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CSRR Mountain Division - 09/16/07

Written by Ian MacMillan

Thursday, 20 September 2007

Frankenstein Trestle - 2.19%

What a great day for a speeder ride in New Hampshire's White Mountains! Setting on in Redstone with the A5-C, myself and 23 other trackcars from CVRTC had perfect weather for our 100 mile round trip on the former MEC Mountain Division, now operated by the Conway Scenic Railroad.

A5-C NEGS 104 at Hazens

This would be the first long trip for the A5-C after its initial mechanical restoration, and would end up being it's last for a few months. After making sure all the running gear was in shape, the engine was running perfectly along with the fuel system and a basic lighting upgrade to bring it to club standards, the car suffered a catastrophic driveshaft universal failure just outside of Bartlett Yard. It appears that 2 bolts on the yoke sheared off and caused the universal to twist, breaking the other side of the yoke, thus putting the car out of service.

Good example of the grade

And thus is the reason why us A car owners set on by each other. My A5-C was pushed the remainder of the trip by friend Harvey with his A4-E. Harvey stated he did not mind pushing me, but I felt bad that I had had the failure, even though it was really something I couldn't have known about. But man was I at the ass end of MANY jokes for the entire ride from just about every club member! The Mountain Division has grades around 2.3% and it put just about EVERY car though it's paces, as we had about a total of 6 cars that had problems, and which are normally flawless performers. At the end of the day, there were 3 cars in tow that had crippling injuries.

But as I said the weather was perfect with sun and temps in the low 60's, allowing for some great photos of the scenery through Crafword Notch.

For more photos, please check out my Picasa album

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