Cool Day at HVRM 8-2-10

Fall is in the air, litteraly. Up till last night, many farmers worked late to combine beans
or corn. Today was a day of rest for some. Rain curtailed their work. Cool conditions
most of the day and towards later part of afternoon, it started to rain again. Time to
call it quits for the day.
 
Start off with the bad news, 3 UTLX tank cars were switched out of the storage track
and put on the interchange.
 
I don't know if a board meeting was held or not, I arrived late and went to work immediately
on the GTW seats. I dumped every bucket, bag, carton of bolts and nuts to find what I
needed and could not find any lag bolts. So spent considerable time in trying to sort nuts and
bolts, then down to hardware store to buy what I needed. Stopped at Garys R's house
and spent too much time, so got back to caboose, it was 12:30pm. I got one seat back
on and the brackets to hold the back on. Started on the 2nd seat and did not make it,
train was leaving and I needed to get off. Locked up caboose and left for the shop area.
 
Back to the REA trailer. I started to remove the REA signs and did quite well on that, cept
when the grinding wheel wore out. Got all off except for one large REA diamond. It can
wait till Tuesday. Loaded them all in the van and will work on them at home. Did some
wire wheel grinding on the new rust. Want to get the side doors off and transport home
to build some new ones. Lots of hardware to remove on the outside of them. Quit finally
about 4:30pm.
 
Other activity, ridership on the 1:30pm train to La Crosse was good, over 60 plus.
At the station stop in LC, lots of people headed to the cabooses off the open air cars.
The wye must of been fouled, as Erie 310 pushed the train back to NJ. Crew was Elmer M,
Doug K, John LaO. Don't know who was conductor, as so many people were car hosts.
 
 
LIRR passenger was getting some attention by Mike K, doing bondo on the sides and
roof. Jason A, Steve N were also inside working on car. The GE was fired up and used
to push passenger car back into west shop, GE's engine sounds good.
 
Tuesday is a work day for me and Les at the museum, many projects to work on,
GTW seats, REA trailer sign, D&RGW 899 passenger car, repaint. Will bring generator
for power tools and maybe can progress faster. Will also bring 2 ladders so we can
put a plank along the side to work off of it. Unless the manlift is available.
 
Pumpkin trains are filling up with advance ticket sales, looks good.
 
Have a safe week everybody.
 
Tom HVRM Restoration