HVRM report (finally!) 4-28-12

Greetings!   After 2 weeks without a computer, finally am back on line.  No boo's or catcall's please!  Remember, you can always hit the delete button!   Arrived at the museum at about 10:00.  Two weeks ago, I had cleaned up an old 8' long chuch pew bench that had been collecting dust in the West Annex of the Shop building and managed to drag it over to the depot.  Loretta Kosloske told me that it needed to be cleaned up to make it more presentable so today she brought in some "Old English" and I spent the morning applying it to the bench.  I have to admit that it looks quite a bit better.  This should help our seating shortage in the depot waiting room.   Lots of other things going on at the museum today.  A number of the boys, including Cory Bennett, Dave Cook, Bob Jachim and others, put the crane up over the new platform next to the main doors on the east end of the shop.  This crane to be used to move barrels of oil inside.  John LaOrange spearheaded the continued erection of the heavy steel shelving alongside the north wall on the East Annex of the Shop.  These steel shelves were removed from the old Milk Station and although they came apart easily enough, putting them back together has been a real puzzle.   There were 4 Guest Engineers during the day today.  Elmer Mannen was the instructing engineer, Fred Boyer was fireman and Bob Albert the Conductor.  Bob Barcus flagged the crossings for the morning guest engineer and after lunch, I took over for the 3 afternoon runs.  Temps today topped out at 51 degrees and with a wicked 20 to 30 m.p.h. wind blowing, it seemed like temps were in the 30's!   Meanwhile, Joe Baker and Steve Newland continued their work on Grasselli Tower.   Rich Warner was "tweaking" the G gauge layout in the gift shop area of the depot.   Joe Kingsbury continued working on putting the big "gang" motor car back together.  It's really looking good.   Speaking of lunch, Margrett Cook had a great lunch spread today including 12 bean soup, ham with corn bread muffings, American fried potatoes, and a number of other items including deserts.   Our HVRM "family" has had some bad news recently.  Chris Risley, Bing's wife, who delivered a lot of great lunches to the museum, passed away rather suddenly.  Our condolences to Bing.  Then heard today that Randall Downs house caught fire and was a total loss.  Randall suffered second degree burns attempting to fight the fire.   After the last Guest Engineer run, Fred Boyer came over to the shop to see if the new number boards he had made fit on to the 2789.  Fred and I climbed up on the smokebox and found out that the boards need a little trimming.  Fred will work on it this week.   Left for home about 5:00 p.m. as they were just locking things up.   Have a great week folks!   Les