| Hello! According to the calendar, Fall began today and with it, our very first taste of fall weather. Temp topped out at about 60 degrees, and the cloudy, rainy conditions cleared up mid-morning with sun on and off all day thereafter. On Thursday of this week, I had gone to Hoosier Valley to work on passenger car # 899. My plan was to use the Manlift when working on the windows. Unfortunately, although it fired right up, and the lift and steering worked, it wouldn't move! I saw Steve Henrichs who had been using it, and he showed me the lever underneath that controls the ancient lifts movement. Next time I should have no trouble. Steve, Joe Baker and Steve Newland were working on Grasselli Tower again. We had a number of Boy Scouts and families at the museum today, and a number of them visited the tower. Crews were being tested today, so I won't even try to advise who was assigned to the various runs. All three of the runs seemed well patronized, although it was a bit hard to tell as the cool weather meant that the open cars on all of the runs were not used. Joe Baker had expressed a desire to have the "X" RR crossing sign in front of Grasselli replaced. This sign has been there for so many years that the yellow paint had faded to an off-white color. Joe said that since Grasselli was looking better all of the time, the RR crossing sign should also look good. Turns out that Matt Lasayko had found a RR crossing sign in the Signal Department storage box car last week and it was in excellent condition. So I measured the 4 openings of the sign currently in place and also the sign Matt had found and discovered that the spacings for the bolt holes were exactly the same! So spent the morning taking down the old sign and putting up the new one. Had some help from Bob Jachim, Steve Newland and Joe. The one leg of the sign had twisted rather violently through the years and getting the new sign hund was a real challenge, but it eventually got done. The gandy dancer crew of Mark Knebel, John LaOrange, Dave Cook and Cory Bennett was out replacing ties again on the old Erie. A number of covered hoppers came in this week for storage on museum trackage. Mark says they will be here for somewhere between 30 and 45 days. Good to see Pat DeGan at the museum today. Others there included Loretta Kosloske, Bob Barcus, Judy Boyer, Louise Kingsbury and Margrett Cook. The boy scout troops provided food for folks today. After lunch, I did some scrounging for parts in the junk piles and then went looking for tools in the Shop. Spent quite a while looking with no success. Then I spotted what looked like a gong type bell sitting collecting dust on a shelf. Many years ago, member Ted Fitzgerald spent a lot of time fixing up weed burner # 161 that the EJ&E had donated to the museum. Ted did a very nice job. Some time after that, when I was up in the cab of the unit, I noticed that the gong style bell was only held on by a nut and washer. I was worried that someone could climb up to the cab when no museum members were present, and steal the bell, so I removed it for safekeeping. Unfortunately, the next spring, I forgot about putting it back, and eventually it faded from my memory. The years passed and when I remembered I had removed the bell, I forgot where I had put it. Could this gong type bell be the one from weed burner # 161? I trudged down there. At first, the clapper on the wall would not strike the bell. Must not be the same one. And then I noticed laying on the floor under where the bell sat, a washer. The outline of the old washer was visible on this bell, and guess what? A perfect fit! Some fiddling with the clapper and I got it to strike. But the second pull shredded the old nylon rope! So that had to be replaced. But eventually, thanks to some manipulation, the bell was reattached, the rope was fixed and the bell now "gongs" once again! You never know just where your efforts at the museum are going to be directed each day! Matt Lasayko did some work on the Erie double semaphore TTO signal. Later in the day, Matt explained to me his plan to activate the Grasselli model board by throwing the levers in the tower in the correct order, a train can be shown moving (with the lights) across the Board. This will apparently take some computer work too, but Matt is working on it. Next week, the Erie-Lackawanna Historical Society will be holding their Annual Convention in nearby Valparaiso, Indiana. As part of the festivities, a train ride to La Crosse is planned. The museum will use EL Alco # 310 and EL caboose # C345 for that train. Helped the boys take down the tent used by the Scouts and then headed for home about 4:30 p.m. after the last train of the day arrived back at HVRM. Enjoy your Autumn everyone. Hopefully we will have a good one weather-wise. Les | 