Dark and dismal, but bright! HVRM 2-26-11

Hello!   Had two days of relatively light snowfall at the end of this week, a reminder that Old Man Winter ain't quite done with us yet.   Dismal day today with temp up to 34 degrees and a bit of light snow in the afternoon.   Quiet day at the museum.  Mike Koehler and Carl Grill spent the week working on Long Island coach 2937.  They had painted silver on the metal framing around the windows but the paint wouldn't dry and was runny.  Mike apparently called the manufacturer and was told, yes, that's what you get.  So, they had to scrape off that paint and get new silver paint and apply it.  A real setback to their work this week!  But this afternoon, Mike and Carl spray painted and the bright news is that the east end and the north side of LIRR 2937 look good in their new coat of Charcoal Gray.  Still have to do the south side, the west end and the roof (which will be Brunswick Green).  Mike has also applied the red end marker lenses to the car.   Joe Baker was finishing up the electrical lights on MKT 13833, the open air flatcar.  Looks really good!    John DeGan worked cleaning the depot, including washing down the floors in both of the washrooms.  Meanwhile, Pat DeGan moved merchandise enabling Bob Barcus to tear down the smaller clothes rack.  This greatly opens up the area in the gift shop in front of the counter.   The wood stove in the Old Shop had not been started, so I cleaned out ashes and eventually got one of the wood matches to light and started the fire.  The problem with that stove is that it just doesn't give off much heat to that portion of the Shop.  It's more a case of workers getting cold and then coming over for a few minutes to stand by the stove and warm up a little bit.   After I finally got the stove going with a couple of the now nearly depleted pieces of cut wood in our indoor wood pile, I started sweeping up sawdust around the woodshop area.  While doing that, Chuck Ness showed up and during our conversation, he informed me that the Old Shop had originally been put up by a predecessor of McGill Manufacturing as a foundry building back in 1917.  I knew the building was old, but did not realize that it was that old!   Lunch from Keller's Diner today consisited of soup, hot turkey in gravy, sausage and noodles in a tomato sauce, various sandwich varieties with spice cake and/or a cantaloupe/pineapple/grape salad, for desert.   After lunch, I journied back to the Shop, stoked the fire with the last of the cut wood pile and then went out and got 3 armfulls of wood from under the snow cover.  By next week, those pieces should hopefully be dry enough to use in the stove.    Work continues to go forward on preparations for the coming passenger season, including the visit of NKP 2-8-4 # 765.  Loretta Kosloske showed Tom Travis and I, the new tickets for the upcoming year.  The back of each ticket contains advertising for three restaurants in town; the Wooden Nickel, Keller's and the Brantwood.  Receipts from the sale of this advertising space, helped offset the cost of the ticket printing.    Steve Newland packed items away up in our storage "attic" in the depot, and found a blue and white sign which Bob Barcus was most happy to take charge of, as it is from the old Pennsy Plymouth depot.   Doug Kosloske was working on the blue card covering EL 310.   Good to see Ted Fitzgerald, a long time member who is very active down at Whitewater Valley these days.   When I finally left at about quarter to 5, Mark Knebel was still waiting for Randall Downs to get back with some items for him.  Randall and Fred Boyer had worked the train show in Muncie today.   Enjoy your week everyone!     Les

FW: Snow leaves, sun shines, at HVRM 2-19-11

Greetings!   With bright sunshine and a temp up to 40 degrees today, most of the snow has disappeared from the museum grounds in North Judson.   Crews were hard at work upon my arrival at 9:45.   Mike Koehler and his painting friend Carl, were busy all day working on LIRR coach # 2937 in the West Shop Annex.  The south side of the car had had a very liberal coating of Bondo applied; so much so that the car sides appeared white!  Mike was smoothing out the roof and this side of the car.   John LaOrange, Dave Cook and Cory Bennett were in the other bay of the West Annex, working on the Payloader.  Since I was in Wisconsin last Saturday, I asked Dave how the repairs had gone on the new backhoe, and he said that it was running "like a top!"   Crew working in the Old Shop section on MKT # 13833, the open air flatcar, consisted of Elmer Mannen and Bob Jachim putting in two cut sections of 2 x 4's between each of the roof ribs of the car, while Joe Baker worked on the electrical.  That's right!  Joe volunteered to install lighting on this car and from the looks of it, is probably about 80% finished.  Meanwhile Joe Kingsbury was working on the cars roof.  I gave Elmer and Bob a hand, and then Elmer was eventually called away to help fire up the Erie 310 to do some equipment switching.  A short time later, Bob went down to talk to some visitors so I finished up the last few sections.  Hope folks don't look to close at that end of the car!  Eventually, the wood roof panels will be screwed down into these 2 x 4's and then a rubber roof installed over the entire car.   Elmer got the Alco running with the help of Bill Dauber and he and Bill, with Doug Kosloske and Fred Boyer as switchman and conductor respectivelly, switched equipment around.  The new valves for the 310 had arrived from Pittsburgh Air Brake Company after rebuilding, and been installed and apparently worked well.  EJ&E transfer caboose # 184 was brought into the shop for work.   Steve Newland bolted the one bottom stairway stringer from the Grasselli Tower landing, down to the ground so that he could measure how much concrete would be needed for the pad upon which the bottom of the stringers are going to eventually sit.  Steve also advised that the plan is to put heavy plastic over the levers in the second floor of the tower to protect those cleaned and oiled levers when he starts in on removing the old peeling paint from the second floor interior.  Steve also says that he intends to finish replacing the small section of rotten boards on the outside of the west side of the tower before the 765's arrival in May.   Bob Barcus reported that nearly all of the 2 days of slots for guests to operate the Berkshire when it is here this Spring, have been spoken for.  The cost for these guest engineers to sit at the throttle of the 1944 Lima built engine cost $765.00, so that is good news for the museum.   Margrett Cook, Judy Boyer and Loretta Kosloske were working in the gift shop today, helped by Andy Roeske and his youngster.   A great lunch consisting of tomato/pasta soup, meat loaf, hot Italian beef sandwiches, pasta salad and numerous other goodies was served.   In the afternoon, I took a ride to Monterey and looked over the old Erie depot there.  The 1883 structure is rough, but looks restorable.  Its location (16 miles from North Judson) with the rail connection no longer in place, is a problem.   Returned to the museum and found the equipment all put to bed.  Cory and John had found some bad leaks in the gas tank of the backhoe, so Jason Annen got out the welder and set out to patch them.  He then ground everything smooth.  Tank was checked but another leak was found.  So, Jason went back at it.  Eventually the gas tank was successfully repaired.  When I left the Shop at 4:45, John was spray painting the tank.   Have a great week everyone!   Les