| Greetings! After 3 days where the temps did not get up to 60 degrees, old Mother Nature told us today that summer ain't quite over yet as we had a beautiful sunny day with temps in the low 70's! Hurrah! Started out the day at 8:00 a.m. by attending the general membership bi-monthly business meeting. A number of things discussed including the FRA inspection of GE # 11; Mid-America Railcar's proposal to bring passenger equipment to HVRM; the lease of Mike Koehler's Long Island commuter coach # 2937; the monetary results of NKP 2-8-4 # 765's visit earlier this year; tie replacement; the Erie Monterey depot, NKP RPO # 356 and various other items. Too much to recap here. I direct your attention to Mark Knebel's Secretary page in the upcoming museum newsletter for further info. After the meeting, I had hoped to go out to Wade Tower and do some general cleanup, hopefully using a motorcar to make the trip. Unfortunately. I was told that the C&I had four covered hoppers parked east of Wade which would prevent getting the putt-putt out there. There doesn't seem to be any way to drive to the location. Elmer Mannen did tell me that they had run out to the tower last week on the trip to La Crosse and decided that they could unload the folks from the Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society who will be visiting Hoosier Valley and riding the train out to Wade at the beginning of October. Tom Travis and I looked over Penn Central boxcar #153177, which Mark and Joe Baker had worked on during this last week as we prepare to eventually reletter it as Pennsylvania Railroad # 607627. The car had one side almost completely primed with only the narrow ladder area to the roof not finished. Tom decided to do some grinding to remove rust and flaking paint on the other side of the car, but was not able to get the manlift to start. So he decided to go down and work on tie replacement on the east end of the museum, but put up our new flag before he left. It is good to see the flag flying over the depot and museum. Meanwhile, I searched for Steve Newland who told me the "secret" to starting the manlift and I was able to finally get it going. Decided that since it was now running, I would remove the light rust and paint the remaining portion of that one side of the car, which I spent the morning doing. Meanwhile, the passenger train schedule began with the museums engineers undergoing recertification during the operations. Not sure of the passenger count for the day, but all three runs had a fair amount of people. Randall Downs, Bill Dauber and Joe Kinsbury, were carhosts today. John DeGan, Elmer, Doug Kosloske, Jason Annen and Fred Boyer were in the cab and some of the guys also acted as conductors. I may have missed some of these guys. I broke for lunch, in the NKP kitchen car. Many goodies although I confined myself to soup and the smoked sausage/cabbage combo. Good! Margett Cook and Pat DeGan worked in the depot gift shop today while Loretta Kosloske sold tickets. After lunch, I decided to head out to check on the tie replacement gang who started again replacing ties between SR 10 and CR 250W, near the old highway rest stop. This is now the parking area for the Erie Monterey Trail. Tom said he was glad I showed up as he was getting tired and decided to head back to work on the PC boxcar now that the manlift was going. I took over for him, pushing the little railroad hand cart as Cory Bennett on the backhoe, Dave Cook and Mark, put in new ties under rail joints, replacing those that the Erie had put in years ago, all of which were in pretty horrible shape. Mark pointed out to me a little brown and white banded snake that had slithered out from under one of the ties they were working on and which made its way into the crack of another tie a little further up the line. Is that one of the poisonous ones that make Indiana their home? Probably not, but I made sure I kept my eye on the little critter the whole time we were in the vicinity of that particular tie! Mark pointed out an Erie tie that had a date nail of 57 (for 1957) and another one for 39. I was able to dig out the 57 nail and gave it to Mark, but we left the other one in the tie, which was still in pretty remarkable condition for being put in by the Erie in 1939. As Cory said, they must have made a good batch of creosote that year! The quality of the wood, might have had something to do with it too. Cory, Mark and Dave eventually ran out of replacement ties, and we then went back and put tie plates under as many of the replacements as we could. Still have to spike them, but that is for another day! After we picked up the tools and the hand cart and put it in Mark's pickup, I headed back to the museum where I found that Tom had cleaned a nice patch of the PC (PRR) boxcar. We were both pretty tired by this time, so took a little break for water and cookies in the kitchen car. Finally, we realized we had to get some paint on the cleaned area otherwise it would rust with the rain due to hit the area Sunday night. Managed to get that done. About this time, the train from La Crosse was heard coming in so we called it a day. I'm pretty tired right now. Lots of physical activity today. Will be plenty sore tomorrow! Hope everyone has a great week. Enjoy what's left of summer! Les | 
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