Re: Combine Elsa

As you mention, metal roofs are a real necessity. Wood burners have a bad habit of throwing out thousands of glowing cinders. While most of them are extinguished by the time they hit the ground, enough of them still settle on the locomotive and on us. We call them kisses from Eureka. Indeed the running boards collect these cinders and have left numerous little burns along their length where they settle in. Every so often I have to take the running boards down and refinish them. I guess that is why the running boards were later made of metal plate. While the cinders are small and light on a wood burner, on a coal burner they throw out flaming rocks in comparison.

Tomorrow ( Saturday ) we are heading out to Boulder City to start nailing down the metal roof. There are one helluva lot of nails that have to be driven.

Dan Markoff