| Greetings! Our mild winter continued with temps in the 40's again today. Arrived at the museum about 9:30 and noticed smoke coming out of the open door of the Shop. Obviously, a diesel had been fired up! Went in to the depot where I found Loretta Kosloske and Bob Barcus working on train planning 2012. From the little I could hear, it sounds like an interesting schedule. The diesel went past the depot and I eventually stuck my head out the door to see what was going on. Turns out that the crew was using GE # 11 to do some switching. Since I had never been in the 95-tonner when it was moving, I decided to take a walk down and see if I could catch a short ride in the cab. Elmer Mannen was engineer with Fred Boyer as fireman and invited me aboard. John DeGan and Doug Kosloske were working on the ground. The crew had shoved the dead Alco into the passing siding and had pulled out the now finished Nickel Plate caboose # 471. Bay window 471 really looks sharp in her new coat of red paint with NKP High Speed Service lettering in the light gray band across the top of the car. The crew went into the caboose track and coupled on to Erie Lackawanna bay window caboose # C345, since she is the next project for the painting crew. They pulled the EL hack out and put it on the main, then shoved everything back into the caboose track. They then went and picked up Alco 310 and headed back toward the shop. When they stopped short of Mulberry Street so that John could flag the crossing, I thanked Elmer and Fred and detrained the GE onto the depot platform. I enjoyed the ride in the unit. I noticed a bit later that the crew had put everthing away, so I assume that the C345 ended up back in the West Shop Annex for painting. Decided to go down and see what, if anything, was going on with the cleanup of the old North Judson Milk Station. Found Bruce Fingerhut, Bob Albert and Steve Newland hard at work. They had a Bailey's truck partially loaded with boxes of good items for that store. There was also a dumpster with stuff that was too far gone to save. I pitched in. Others helping included Fred (after his crew duties were finished), John LaOrange, Mark Knebel and Ryan Kertis. A lot of the steel shelving which had been taken apart, was loaded and moved in both Mark and Ryan's pickup trucks and taken over for use later in the Shop. After the truck was driven to Bailey's, we started in burning old cardboard boxes and other burnable "junk". This fire really got going after a while, with lots of smoke at times. Fortunately, the folks that live behind the old Milk Station are very tolerant of our efforts. I think that they are glad that the old structure is eventually going to go. As we neared the end of a very tiring day, one of the ladies that lives in one of the neighboring houses, even brought over a pitcher of hot sweet tea for Ryan, Bob, Bruce and myself. A nice gesture to be sure. Mark stopped by to tell us that the museum had been "buttoned up" so we stirred up the fire to try to get some of the unburned items at the bottom of the pile to the top. But I was tired and decided to call it a day at about 4:15 p.m. Hope that everyone has an enjoyable New Year! Les
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