Our latest Build 11 work session was held on Monday through Wednesday, March 23-25. Our goal during this session was to lower the locomotive frame onto the wheels. After considerable collaboration we determined that we had to remove the forward crossbar that surrounds the lead truck pivot in order to allow the lead truck radius bar to slip into the slot formed by the crossbar assembly located under the cylinder saddle. We suspended the frame from the forward gantry crane and rear air jacks and carefully removed the jacks and blocking that had been holding up the frame during four years of construction. We also removed the pedestal binders that will be reinstalled below the driving wheelset axles. Because of the lifting throw of the air jacks the lowering has to be done in two stages.

The first stage lowers the (rear) frame onto blocking and the air jacks are then reconfigured to lower the rest of the way. As you can see from the photo a lot of people were involved in carefully lowering the frame.

We want to thank the following individuals who supported your Build 11 team (Harold Downey, Quentin Bethune, Gordon Cook, Joe Monty, Earl Leavitt, Jason Lamontagne and Rick Sisson) during this operation: Jerry and Carlos Steinke, Bryce Weeks, Brian Whitney, Joe Lamontagne, Eric Schade, Ron Ginger and JB Smith.

We lowered the frame until the shoes and wedges enclosed the driving boxes. And then we discovered an interference between these components. The shoes and wedges were dropped from the frame and Harold Downey and Gordon Cook removed a few thousandths of an inch from these.

In other news, Harold has been machining mating surfaces on our rocker box castings and Earl Leavitt has been preparing to line bore the boxes for the rocker arm seats. These are heavy castings and Harold made good use of our overhead crane to move these components.

Quentin Bethune has begun work machining our eccentric straps in his home shop. As you may recall, Quentin machined our eccentrics. Machining these straps will be a big job and will take quite some time to complete.

Meanwhile, a big thank-you to our members, friends and followers who have raised $31,812.50 towards our 2026 fundraising goal which will be MATCHED for a total of $120,000. We appreciate your interest in the project and continued support.

Learn more and contribute at www.build11.org