<P>Please take a look at my new web page. I going to try to have pictures of most all the steam engines in georgia on my web page. email me with any suggestions or thoughts.<br>thanks <br>Eric Lauterbach<br>http://e_lauterbach.tripod.com/georgiasteam.htm<br>




Eric's Georgia steam page
lauterbach@peachnet.campuscwix.net

<P>Eric - come on back to Savannah now that the roundhouse is open and you will find the missing tender and some other steam locomotives as well. <p>Dave<br>




lathro19@idt.net

<P>Err.... Dave, the Roundhouse has been open for about ten years..that poor Scott Lumber engine has been sitting there for at least eight of those years. <br>And Eric, please don't miss that, dare I say it, "cute" bright red 3' porter 0-4-0T at Walthourville (Ex winston co.) - the owner runs it once a year on his farm, along with more old steam tractors and stationaries than you can possibly appreciate in one weekend. <br>

<P>Hell, Rudd, the Savannah shops is the best kept secret in Georgia now and was even less publicized 10 years back. The Visitors Center across the street doesn't even know we are there much of the time. I don't blame Eric for missing it. I think he would like to see it, and we could show him a good time. <p>Dave<p><br>




lathro19@idt.net

<P>Dave, sometimes 10 years seems like it's been forever. When you're there all the time, it seems like little progress is made. And you're right, it is one of the best kept secrets. If I hear one more person say "I've lived all my life in Savannah, and I didn't even know this place was here!" my reaction will surely be construed as reasonable cause or a crime of passion. There wouldn't even be a Savannah as we know it if it weren't for that sometimes very frustrating place, where progress can sometimes be measured with calipers. I am e-mailing Eric all the JPEGS I have of our steam forthwith. <br>Rudd<br><br>

<P>Rudd is too modest to explain that he has just finished working on solving the major mechanical hurdle on getting GOAT up and running - resurfacing the crankpins. The wheelsets were too small to fit in TVRR's machinery so we borrowed an old crankpin lathe which, like everything in Savannah, required substantial repair to be useful. The lathe was designed for flycranks on outside framed NG locomotives and we had to adapt it to wheel center mounting as well as power it and repair some old damage. It took 3.5 months of his spare time but the job is now done and GOAT can start to go back together real soon. <p>I am sending Hume a picture of Rudd at work in hope that he can find a place for it where it can be shared by us all.<p>Dave<br>




lathro19@idt.net

<P>Dave, as right, I'm too modest to accept all those accolades, leastwise by myself. You got the dang blame thing down here, Rob Feldner helped with repairing the lathe and figuring out how to set it up, not to mention helping this busted up old body hump the thing around. Now it's down to a heck of alot of polishing. enough so that we'll all get a bit of the credit for that. <br>I gotta admit, it was a bit of a thrill to be using a 1910's machine to fix a 1913 loke. Another great ride in the wayback machine. <br>Now we get to enjoy a ride UP on the drop table I fixed some years ago. Beats jacking and cribbing any day!<br>