| Greetings! Arrived at North Judson about 8:45 a.m. to find Bob Jachim hard at work removing flowers and weeds (mostly weeds fortunately) from one of the plant display areas. These areas, which are boxed in with old railroad ties, were set up some years ago around the wood telephone poles in the museums parking lot. Museum visitors had a tendency to back in to these wooden poles at times and the idea behind the plant displays and the ties was to protect the poles and make them more visible. The idea has been a great success. Most of the plants were put in over a period of time by former member Cheri Schultz, who used both native flowers and plants and also domesticated plants. Unfortunately, these areas have become overgrown and unsightly these past few years. Bob's "weeding" was most welcome. Bob and I also moved around some of the old ties that form the parking spots in the parking area so that we were able to get another automobile spot set up. Bob Barcus singlehandedly manned the gift shop and ticket sales, as the ladies in the normal crew all were unable to be at HVRM this morning. I dropped off a newly purchased can of light green paint which is to be used for Grasselli Tower and also for the Mulberry Street watchman's crossing shanty that I am painting. Although there was rain in the forecast for this afternoon, I decided to do some painting on the shanty anyway. I noticed that Bing Risley had put some additional crushed stone around the outside of the shanty this past week, which is much appreciated. Fred Boyer was picking up old track material in front of the Shop building an taking it over to the track supply area. Fred then grabbed a bunch of old concrete blocks and took them over to Grasselli and, after knocking excess mortar off of them, stacked them in front of the lower door to the Tower as temorary stairs. The train crew had done some spotting of cars and moved MDT refrigerator car # 13385 over to track 1 in front of the Shop so that the second side of the car can eventually be scrubbed down to remove road grime. Hopefully the garden hose will reach over to the car when that project is started up again. In addition, Penn Central boxcar # 153177 had been moved over to the track near the NKP kitchen car. Presumably, this means that a restoration is to be soon undertaken including repainting the car back to Pennsylvania Railroad # 607627. Steve Newland had worked earlier in the week on the stairway that leads up to the second floor door of Grasselli, and was doing some additional work on the stairs today. Joe Kingsbury spent the morning cutting grass in the future roundhouse site space. Bill Maloney of the Blackhawk Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society was a visitor at Hoosier Valley today. It was good to see Bill and talk to him. He had not been at the museum for a number of years and Fred took the opportunity to give Bill a tour of Grasselli. Blackhawk has supported various projects at the museum in the past, including signal restoration and installation and the move of Grasselli Tower from East Chicago to North Judson. Train crews were very busy today. In addition to the forementioned switching, the four Mid-America passenger cars had to be sorted so that the Mohave and Keystone Grille could be separated from the other two Mid-America cars in prepartion for their scheduled assignment on the 4:00 p.m. dinner train run. Train crew today included John DeGan, Andy Hershman, Doug Kosloske, Joe Kingsbury, Elmer Mannen, Bill Dauber and Randall Downs. The regular 11:00 train headed for English Lake. A very light rain started late in the morning so I packed up and put paint cans and brushes away for the day. Loretta Kosloske arrived about this time to help Bob Barcus in the depot. No lunch today, so members were on their own. After lunch, the rain started in a bit harder, so Fred and I decided to join Bill Maloney in B&LE caboose # 1989 on the 1:30 p.m. train. A nice ride, but the rain continued to increase, the wind picked up drastically and eventually the riders on the Katy open air flat car were forced to take cover in Long Island commuter coach # 2937. Many of the riders got a good soaking. Fortunately, the temp was still about 80 degrees, so the riders were not upset. As we approached North Judson on the return trip, I noticed that the three headed ex-Erie searchlight signal just to the west of the tower displayed green over red over red. This signal had long been displaying three reds, and Matt Lasayko, our signal guy, had been working on it last week to see if he could figure out what the problem was. As EL 310 went by the signal today, the top green changed correctly to red and it was great to see that this signal is now working correctly. Of course, Matt had just recently fixed the top semaphore blade on the ex-Erie TTO signal that is just to the east of Mulberry Street, and seeing that signal blade drop down to red as the 310 passed was also wonderful. After arriving back at the depot, I had the opportunity to talk to Cory Bennett for a few moments. He and Mark Knebel had just gotten back from the tie work project and Cory reported that the rain had caught them as they were spiking the last 3 ties in and rather than leave, they worked in the downpour and finished the project. He reported that 25 ties were put in today and 25 more yesterday (Friday) and an additional 8 ties were also put in north of State Route 8 in La Crosse. Perhaps because of the inclement weather, there were no riders for the 2:45 English Lake train. As the passengers began arriving for the dinner train, the weather started to clear up. The crew pushed the caboose train cars back and dropped the Bessemer & Lake Erie caboose on the main near the Shop, then went east and placed the other cabooses and LIRR 2937 into the caboose track. Then another trip back west to got ready to pull the Mohave and Keystone Grille out from in front of the shop. There is apparently a freon leak in the air conditioning system on one of these two cars and Jason Annen, Andy Roeske and Steve got out the tank of freon and charged the system. Finally the train crew was able to couple the two passenger cars and the caboose together and pull them up to the depot for loading. Included in the dinner crew were Joe and Louise Kingsbury, Loretta K., Bill D., Jason A., Andy R., in addition to the folks that were catering the event. Doug K. was the conductor, with Elmer M., John DeG. and Jason Jordan in the cab of the EL Alco. Departure was at 4:07 p.m., only slightly off the advertised. With that, I did some minor gardening work and then headed for home after a very active and sane day at HVRM! Les | 
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