The Pirate train for Trinidad was pushed back into the shop one last time today. We built two shipping pallets for the components and bolted on the train engine body pieces and one rail car. I then cut the components for the cab bulkhead and welded them into place. Tomorrow we'll finish the sculpting up to these new pieces and begin the final painting. Next week these pieces will be sent to Hillcrest Shops in California to be mated to the operational chassis. We can hardly wait to see all this detail running down the tracks!
Back to the shop
I was still in a bit of a fog as I put my first day into the shop after two and a half weeks on the road and a twelve hour time zone change. Jet lag on this scale will undoubtably take a few days to get over I'm sure. The shop is busting at the seams as we wait to send off the first truckload of finished pieces to NEBs bowling center the first week of the New Year. There are now sixteen arches plus eighteen of the posts and twenty-one beams completed. The router and plasma cutter are running steady churning out new components for even more.
Always learning
The greatest thing about my trip to Dubai was a chance to learn lots of new things. With so many talented industry professionals working in one place there were a lot of techniques at play. Often watching someone else work was affirming, that we have been doing things in an efficient way for all these years, despite being largely self taught. Often I saw something that opened my eyes to a whole new way of doing things. And occasionally I saw something that seemed to be a little backwards. In all cases talking with these professionals allowed me to both learn and sometimes share our way of doing things with those interested.
One of my 'AHA' moments came when I saw one of the welders working with a tool I had never seen before. It was used for bending pencil rod that was already welded in place. I grabbed my camera and with permission snapped a photo. the business card beside the bending tool is to provide a reference of scale. We'll whip up a few of these in the next few days and give them a try.
