| Greetings friends! What was supposed to start out as a warm day near 50, and then see the temp progressivly drop all day with rain eventually starting, turning to ice and then to snow showers, did none of that! The temp after the morning Board meeting was 53 degrees and when I went to lunch, there was hazy sun and a temp of 59! It moderated in the late afternoon, but no precip as I write this after 6:00 p.m. Our mild winter continues! Let's hear it for global warming! Lots of stufff going on at the museum today. Bob Jachim, Steve Henrichs and Steve Newland were digging out loose stone and mud from the old unloading area just west of the depot. This area had been filled with stone up to the top of the rail many years ago, to aid in unloading railroad equipment that was moved in to the museum by truck. The ties unfortunately, which were old to begin with, were thought to have deteriorated through the years and when the extra stone was dug out a couple of week ago, this was confirmed. Some new ties will be needed before the next operating season. Cory Bennett, John LaOrange and Mark Knebel were going to apply a new rain gutter to the old Erie building that John had recently repaired. The one wall of this old Erie maintenance-of-way building had rotted out and John put in a new wall. Hopefully the new gutter will keep most of the water away from the interior walls. Doug Kosloske and John DeGan worked on pulling the heads from the Erie S1 diesel preparatory to sending them to Pittsburgh Air Brake. Hope I got that right! John told me later that Doug had suffered a minor injury during this work. That reminds me that if I usually come home from a day at the museum with some kind of bruise or nick or muscle pain. I guess I should expect that as I am probably one of the more clumsy people in existance. No problems today though despite working with Bill Dauber and Fred Boyer on continued restoration work on our old IC yellow display caboose. We managed to pound and hammer and unscrew and get the old display cabinets out of the car. Fred finished off removing the dried up tar that had been put in the seams of the cupola where it met the caboose roof. This had dried and cracked through the years and is probably where we were getting some of our leakage problems, along with the leakage from the windows we had put in. Bob Albert took the torch to the old C&EI car (ex U.S. Army kitchen car) again, this time in an effort to cut the bolts off of the bottom of the car which held the cars stove and the oil tank for the stove. The mission was accomplished and eventually those will have to be removed from the car. Bjarne Henderson started in on the restoration of our Pullman Troop Sleeper. This car has experienced even more leakage problems than the aforementioned yellow caboose. Bjarne started removing plywood panels in an effort to determine just where the leakage was occouring. John DeGan, eventually went over to help him, and Fred and I did likewise when we had finished for the day with work on the caboose. Matt Lasayko showed up in the afternoon and started working on signals. I noticed that the EJ&E searchlight signal was lit, after a period of time when it was not working. Good to see that! So, quite a bit of work ongoing at the museum. This is the time to be doing stuff like this. Tear down before you can build up! Next Saturday will be the museums Annual Meeting. Colder weather on the way this week folks, so bundle up! Les | 
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