Turnaround at HVRM 11-24-12

Greetings!   Had a week that started out mild with temps in the low 60's.  I managed to get to the museum on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, to work on passenger coach # 899.  Did some painting (touching up black paint drips on the pullman green body paint) and also painting the one end of the roof that I could reach from the Alco C420 platform.  Then removed the blue tape around the inside of the windows I painted earlier this year, and also the blue tape from the outside of one window that I missed last week.  Cory Bennett was also there on Wednesday loading up the dump truck with stone ballast.  He said that he and Joe Kingsbury and someone else had put 22 new ties under the Main Line Shop Lead switch and the Shop switch itself.    The great weather held through Thanksgiving Day but started to turn around that evening.  Temps on Friday were in the low 30's and this is where it was today when I checked the thermometer on the Mulberry Street trackside watchman's shanty.  I pulled in this morning around 10:00 a.m. and a crew was already hard at work spiking down the new ties, tamping, levelling and removing the old ties from the area.   During the day, I saw Cory, John LaOrange, Dave Cook, Bob Jachim, Doug Kosloske, Steve Henrichs, Mark Knebel, Rich Warner and Bing Risley, all in this crew.  By the end of the day, both switches had been done.  Because the switches were being worked on, the planned move of the two display cars into the shop, obviously did not take place.  Next week!   Meanwhile, Joe did some additional painting on museum motor car # 591.  The temp in the original Shop building was only about 40 degrees, barely warm enough to paint!   Someone had turned on the signals.  Always nice to see them lit, even if no trains are running.    Fred Boyer was working on C&EI MofW car # A-1054 (ex-Army kitchen car # K325) so I joined him.  We managed to take down the wood center wall that divided the two ends of the car.  Then worked on removing more of the rotten plywood under the windows on one wall.  Fred went to lunch and I swept up the car, throwing wood chips and pieces and dirt into a wheelbarrow that Fred had requisitioned from the East Shop Annex.   After Fred returned, I went for beans and Fred started in on the steel tool bench that the C&EI had installed on one wall.  I gave Fred a hand with it when I returned and he finally got it removed.  We burned a bunch of the junk wood in the Shop's wood stove.  That stove doesn't do much to keep the old Shop area warm, but is a handy way of getting rid of scrap wood.   A new sign was made to put on a Billboard that the museum had rented out on the U.S. 35 and State Route 10 intersection area and some of the guys went out there at the end of the day, to put it up.   I actually saw a few snow flurries earlier today so the cold weather is probably now here to stay.  We still have two days of Santa trains scheduled for next month, so the train season is not quite over yet.    Stay warm this week folks!  Have a great one!     Les