HVRM 16 October 2010

Yet another beautiful day in North Judson. Warm sun, nice breeze, good train ridership.
 
Thursday me and Les, worked on the D&RG 899 passenger car. Did more grinding on
the roof and completed the entire lenght of the car. Now ready for black paint on roof
and pullman green on the sides. I will be going down Thursday/Friday to work on
899 or REA trailer if weather is decent. Saturday I will not be avail to work.
 
First job was to put seats down in the GTW caboose. I had a change of plans, went to
Toto, WA9KRT's house for a crane to take down his old 2 meter EME array, get it on
the ground so he can rework it into 70 CM EME array. The crane took quick work of
lowering the boom, only one problem with a U bolt snagging on tower. K9MRI Joe from
Ft Wayne came over to watch also and retreive his prop pitch rotator that Don's son
rebuilt. Joe is off the air due to a failure of his boom is now a V shape, due to equipment
failure. After a nice lunch at Richards in Toto with everyone, it was back to North Judson.
 
Les had completed putting the brackets behind the seats to secure them from moving and
squeezing fingers. We now only have one inside coach seat to install and one outside
coach seat to reinstall on the platform. With only 2 more Saturdays of the Pumpkin trains
all the seats will be filled.  It got too close to train time so we cleaned up the cab
and headed to other projects.
 
Good train ridership, over 117 riders to La Crosse. Dave Cook had gone earlier in the
day to help the C&I move a grain train out of La Crosse to clear up the wye for the
tourist train to wye. Cory worked the ballast pile on the west side of the tracks to
smooth it down with the payloader. No work on the roof sealing on the east shop.
 
Grasseli tower got some sanding, filling nail holes and priming. Steve Newland and
helper.
 
Mike Kohler worked on the LIRR coach car sanding down bondo. Fred Boyer had
worked earlier in the day sanding.
 
Mark Kniebel loaded up 2 new ties and went down the Erie main and replaced 2
junk ties
 
I went down to the west shop and worked on wire wheeling the sides of the REA trailer
and did some paint priming. I found a ladder with flat steps and a platform at the top
to stand on, made work much easier on the feet. Last week I took the REA signs over
to a car painter friend, he suggested using Rustoleum spray paint on the areas  that
need repainting. I will start on the back sides first and paint them black with a couple
of coats of paint. The big diamond signs need the red repainted. The longer signs
will just have to be touched up with one shot paint. I will clear coat all the signs
when done. Remounting the signs will have a piece of thick rubber between the sign
and walls to prevent rusting on the walls.
 
Les worked on 899's vestibule door priming it.
 
Two pumpkin trains next weekend, and one more on the 30th, a twilight run. Should be
fun. Most are filled with pre resgistration tickets.
 
Have a safe week, drive carefully