| Folks - A hot day at North Judson, but a morning overcast kept the temps down from the predicted high of 93 degrees to a slightly more bearable 88. Lots of movement at the museum today. There were of course, the two caboose trains to English Lake. First train had a number of riders in wheel chairs and the lift on EJ&E transfer caboose 184 got a good workout, but not sure of the passenger count. There was a light passenger load on the second train. Elmer Mannen and John DeGan shared engineer/fireman duties with Doug Kosloske the conductor. Bill Dauber and Randall Downs were car hosts. John LaOrange and Mark Knebel managed to get one of the Whitcomb's Cat diesels going and used the old center cab diesel to do quite a bit of switching during the day. This included pulling out the 2789, setting N&W boxcar # 54880 over onto the display track and putting NKP boxcar # 15797 over by the kitchen car. To get everything moved around and into the right place, quite a few moves had to be made by John and Mark. In the meantime, Fred Boyer was going to bring the manlift from near the NKP kitchen car over to Grasselli Tower only to find one tire nearly flat. He finally located an air tank in the Shop and brought it over and was able to fill the tire. I then managed to steer the lift over to Grasselli without hitting anyones car or any railroad equipment (although it was close a few times!) Fred and I then spent the morning putting wood putty into nail holes and nicks on the middle section of the north side of the Tower. Ran out of the the wood filler just before we broke for lunch. After lunch, Fred and I tried to get another big tub of wood putty but could only find small tubes at both Norwayne Lumber and Hoppe Hardware. So we glued some flaking wood siding pieces on Grasselli back into place, sanded down the now dry wood filler and then gave a coat of white primer to what we had done. In the meantime, Steve was working on the door to the second floor. The N&W boxcar mentioned above was moved to the display track because of its fresh coat of boxcar red paint and a very nice job of lettering of the car by Joe Kingsbury. NKP 15797 took its place as that car will now have rust removed, primer and a fresh coat of paint applied and then the Nickel Plate lettering put back on. Matt Lasayko of the signal department was showing one of his friends the various signals at the museum. Fred is going to check again with the IHB this week about the two head signal that the railroad had promised to us when we were working on getting Grasselli moved. Jon Schmitt was spraying for weeds along the right of way at the museum site. Doug Kosloske told me that we will definitely be having some type of a pumpkin train this year, but I saw nothing on the train schedule about it on the museums website, so not sure just what date that will actually take place. Margrett Cook, Loretta Kosloske and Pat DeGan were working in the depot gift shop all day. Other museum members on hand today included Bob Jachim, Tom Royce, Cory Bennett and Joe. Probably missed a few others. My apologies. Have a good week! Les | 
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