| Hello! Although we have had a couple of spring-like days since Spring officially arrived here in northwest Indiana, this past week was much more typical of winter. Today at North Judson was a good example. Although there was some sunshine, temps hovered in the 30's all day, briefly touching 40 before dropping back down again. And a wicked north wind in the 20's and gusting into the 30's and coming straight down off of Lake Michigan, made the day feel like January instead of late March. Still, work at Hoosier Valley went on. John LaOrange, Dave Cook and Mark Knebel worked on track near the east switch of the runaround track. This switch was in the very first piece of trackwork put on museum grounds when the museum crossed over Main Street back in 1988 or 1989. The switch was built of various components and is thrown by an old Erie high stand switchthrow, the only one at the museum. Rich and his friend Jeff, continued their work on the G scale layout that runs around the top part of the walls in the gift shop section of the depot. A plastic barrier is being installed for safety of depot visitors. Meanwhile, the UP passenger train, pulled by a A-B-A set of Alco PA's, looks and sounds wonderful! Margrett Cook, Loretta Kosloske, Judy Boyer and Pat DeGan manned the gift shop today. A train crew headed by Jason Annen and Andy Hershman, had the Alco out and pulled the string of freight cars over to the Shop area. Andy, Mitch Montgomery and Kelly Lynch, with help from Jason, spent the day doing single car brake tests on each of our freight cars. Some failed to pass, others did pass. Those that failed will be worked on to bring them up to snuff. Kyle Flanigan was at the museum today and told us that he had been granted a National Railway Historical Society award to attend their RAILCAMP this summer at Steamtown. This is a great program for teenagers who are interested in railroads and rail presevation. Kyle is very deserving of the honor. HVRM is proud to have entered his name in for consideration by the Blackhawk Chapter of NRHS. This is another great thing that Blackhawk has done for Hoosier Valley and railroad preservation. Fred Boyer spent the day attaching platform hand rails and "Watch Your Step" signs to the end steps of Long Island passenger coach # 2937. The LIRR coach looks great, with all of the lettering now on the car; LONG ISLAND spelled out in white on the cars letterboard, the car number centered on the car under the windows in red letters on a stainless steel type background, and the circled number 147 on each end of the car on both sides. I am not quite sure what the 147 signifies, but Mike says it is authentic to this car. Bill Dauber, Joe Kingsbury, Elmer Mannen and Doug Kosloske were working on the platform that is going to be installed so that folks can get from EJ&E # 184, our transfer caboose, over to the MKT # 13833, our new open air passenger carrying flat car. Meanwhile, Joe has stencilled the outline for the car numbers and reporting marks and all of the car data, on the car and must now just fill in the stencils with white paint. Bob Jachim had his drill out and was drilling holes in corrugated metal sheets for some project. I forgot to ask Bob what the project was! I will find out eventually. I couldn't work on MDT 13385 since the crew was working on the freight cars, but by hanging around, I was able to check out the TTX (ex-Pennsy) flat car. This car came in to HVRM lettered as TTX # 475037, but we have no idea as to the original Pennsy car number. I checked out the replacement roller bearing trucks on the car and found that one set of trucks was numbered for TTX # 475062. Perhaps this was the original PRR number! So I checked the other truck to see if it carried the same number. NO! It was numbered for TTX # 251776. What kind of a Trailer Train car carried that number? So....no closer yet to an answer! Steve Newland was removing the rotten wood siding boards from the west side of the northwest corner of Grasselli Tower. Steve made the sad discovery that the diagonal boards under the wood siding was also rotten. Now he must replace the underlayment in this area too! When the boys finished the brake tests on the freight cars, it was getting on near 5 o'clock and I called it a day. The train crew was going to have to switch everything out, putting the cars that passed on one track and those that didn't pass on another, so that they could be worked on. They had their work cut out for them, and it was going to take a while. I had been out most of the day, going inside to help Fred for just a few minutes and then breaking for a cup of coffee. By the end of the day, I was pretty cold and threw in the towel and let old man winter win this one. Spring is on the horizon. I will fight another day! Hang in there everyone! Les | 
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