| Greetings! Warm, sunny day at Hoosier Valley today with temps in the mid to upper 80's. Train crew (Andy Hershman, Fred Boyer, Mark Knebel, Bob Albert) started out switching the leased cars and spotting two UTLX cars on the interchange track for pickup this week by the C&I. After those two leave, we will be down to a total of 19 leased tank cars, 17 Union Tank Car and two others. I did hear that there may be another lease deal in the works, so something to hope for. Loretta Kosloske asked me to clean the seats on the open flat car, but I could not find a water bucket in either the depot or Shop building. Finally found one in the Erie building but by that time, John DeGan had cleaned the seats on the open car. I did manage to wash down the seats on the platforms of GTW caboose #75072. Loretta later reported we had a total of 98 riders for the two English Lake runs today. She also said that a number of riders today reported that they had come to HVRM because of hearing one of those radio ads that the museum has purchased. There were also some coupons turned in by riders from our newpaper advertisements. Tom Travis continues his excellent restoration work on the REA semi-trailer. Dave Cook, Cory Bennett, Bing Risley and Mark Knebel unloaded the bundled ties from the TTX (ex-PRR) flat car despite the bees that are nesting in the ties. I spent the morning, trying to get into old 1910 passenger car #899 which had been pushed up against the rear of Metra (IC) commuter coach #1502. The only way to get into 899 is through the end platform next to 1502 and the door on that end of the Metra car was locked! Bob Jachim and I spent some time looking for the key in Mark's office, to no avail. Finally got a key from Elmer Mannen but then found out that the lock on that end of the 1502 was screwed up (the lock on the other end of the car worked fine!) John DeGan and I then tried the car mover, but could not get it in close enough to the passenger cars wheels. Finally was able to get Cory to bring the Payloader down on his way to lunch and he was able to push the 899 two feet forward, which was enough to unable me to put a ladder onto the end and climb up and open the car. Spent the afternoon cleaning some of the old junk out of the car. After lunch, Cory was finally able to get the dump truck running and with Cory using the Payloader and Dave the dump truck, they moved quite a bit of ballast from the east side of Main Street over to the ballast piles on the west side of Main. Meanwhile, Mark and Bing sorted ties. Steve Newland and Fred Boyer continued painting the north side of Grasselli in light green paint, and it is probably now about 70% painted. Jason Annen was working on GE #11. Gift shop was manned by Pat DeGan, Margrett Cook, Judy Boyer and Loretta. Others at the museum today included Elmer Mannen, Joe Kingsbury, Dan Siple, Andy Roeske, John Ross and a number of visitors. I have probably omitted some people and I apologize for that. Have a good week folks. Les | 