Part III of our Alaska Adventure

[ckent323]

We departed Solvang for Alaska on August 2. We are on day 55 and have completed three parts of our four part Alaska adventure. We are presently 3 days into part IV of our alska Adventure.

Part I was our ferry journey to Ketchikan, Juneau, Sitka, Gustavus and Whittier. We experienced some rain but mostly had good weather.

Part II was our travels with our trucks and campers from Whittier to Palmer to McCarthy, to Valdez and back to Anchorage. We had mostly good weather.

Part III Was our round trip travels via our railroad track inspection car on the Alaska Railroad. We travelled over 960 miles of track in 16 days staying in Talkeetna, Denali Park, Fairbanks, Wasilla, Girdwood and Seward. We had more good weather for the most part. We arrived back in Anchorage on Sunday after a beautiful, relatively warm, clear and sunny day travelling from Seward. (we did experience heavy fog and cold temperatures around Kenai Lake).

Today I received a link to the Seward Journal for an article on our visit to Seward.

Heer is the front page link:

https://www.sewardjournal.com/eedition/page-1/page_77467964-ec79-5b45-b032-7edf22324f8c.html


and here is the link to the accompanying article:

https://www.sewardjournal.com/eedition/page-6/page_e247dd35-4a82-5c00-b2f9-abe388e47f41.html?fbclid=IwAR0y_UdYDVDcdKd3gfJAfVcHQTK_glP9qsXvAtu-OpLUDw5kbC_fYMrHQi8

 

[Dirt Rider]

Need pix of you and the truck! Glad to see you made this happen!

 

[Dirt Rider]

Great pix in the paper BTW

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Craig that's a great photo of you and your rig.
Didn't realize it is that old. Pretty cool to be
making the tour in that car.
Thanks for the link.
Frank

 

[ski3pin]

Pretty darn neat! Thanks for including the news article!

 

[ckent323]

My 1944 Fairmont S-2-E is (as of this run) the last one cylinder, 2-cycle, belt car to run on the Alaska Railroad. All of the other cars are newer and have 2 cylinder, 4 cycle, CCKB type Onan engines.

Retrotech!

 

[Vic Harder]

very cool... I missed the breakdown of your '44 in your text posts. What happened?

 

[ckent323]

The two bolts that hold the two halves of the rear axle pulley that the belt drives somehow loosened and allowed a 3" long 1/4" x 1/4" key that fits 1/2 in a slot in the axle and 1/2 in a slot in the pulley to work its way out. The pulley was just spinning on the axle. One of the 9/16-12 nuts fel off as well.

After a lot of calls and walking around town I located the appropriate nut and a piece of brass 1/4" x 1/4" key stock from which I cut the appropriate length key (3"). There was plenty of brass key stock left over (as well as a couple of spare nuts) to make another couple of keys if needed. Car worked fine once I got the key in and everything tightened back up.

These cars were never designed to run over 50 miles or so. They vibrate horribly (no suspension) and periodically (particularly after nearly 1000 miles) nuts and bolts can work loose.