Late Summer Doldrums...not at Hoosier Valley on 8/24/13

Greetings!

 

Late hot summer weather with kids heading back to school and vacations still occurring, seems to be a good background for slowing things down at the railroad museum.  Not so HVRM.

 

Arrived just after 9:00 to find the train already sitting at the depot for the 11:00 departure.  The "Gandy Dancers" of Mark Knebel, David Cook, John LaOrange and Cory Bennett, were

working on replacing a couple of switch ties on the east end of the museum property.

 

I went over and took some measurements requested by a gentleman in Australia (NOT a misprint) who is going to be making a model of the F30D TTX flatcar like our number 475037.

 

I noticed that the museum signals were not working, so I went down to the electrical box and turned them on.  All seemed to be functioning perfectly, but more later.

 

Fred Boyer was showing a couple the second floor of Grasselli Tower, so I wandered down to the lower level.  We had talked about removing a couple of the wood planks that comprise

the walkway to the interlocking machine so that future visitors could get around the old "octopus" hot water boiler furnace that is still in the tower.  Right now, the lower lever is loaded

with "junk", but eventually it too will be cleared up and then visitors can walk all the way to the back of the structure.  One alternative to removing the walkway planks would be to move

the old furnace over closer to the wall, although that would be quite a chore and also entail new piping, even though the furnace will always remain non-operating.  It took some time to

find the correct wrenches in the Shop building and to convince the old rusted bolts to give up the fight, but eventually I managed to get them removed and the two planks taken off.  The

bottom line is that it appears that this idea will enable future visitors to get around the furnace!  Some clean up/paint up of the area will eventually be required.

 

Joe Baker had arrived and continued his priming and painting of the new window frames that Steve Newland had made and brought to the tower.

 

Mark Knebel had finished painting the  EJ&E transfer caboose this week, and Joe Kingsbury was tracing the 184 number on the side of the car with actual painting to happen later.

 

The 11:00 train left for English Lake and the Erie TTO signal (double semaphore) went from red up to yellow as the train cleared the block.  Nice.  And then up to green.  Uh Oh!  The

semaphore blade would almost make it to the upright position, only to fall back.  Again.  Again.  And again.  I opened up the box at the base, but could not see anything obvious to why

this was happening and since my actual knowledge of signals is nil, I decided to turn off the signal circuit.  So no signals today at HVRM!

 

Train crew was John LaOrange as engineer and Doug Kosloske as conductor.  Randall Downs was car host on open car.  Not sure other car hosts.   

 

A few weeks back, Steve Newland had put in the new tongue and groove flooring next to the upper floor door and now needed to repair the rotted area around where the replacement

brick chimney will eventually go.  Unfortunately, this area uses thicker tongue and groove boards, so Steve has to take a 1/4" off each board to match it up with the old planking that is

not going to be replaced.  Plus put in new a new groove to line it up with the old, still good, material.

 

Fred Boyer worked at setting up the scaffolding next to the IC yellow display caboose and I gave him a hand with that.  Meanwhile, Joe came in and started sanding the dried Bondo on

the sides of the car to make the areas smooth before they can be painted.

 

Tom Travis had a morning bus charter, but showed up in the afternoon to use up some old black paint on the trucks on Trailer Train flat car 475037.  Nice job until Tom ran out of paint.

 

Fred Boyer ground the excess steel off of my 18" grab iron and then took the old grab iron brackets off of the TTX flat car.  I think I will be able to use the 18" grab for the 17" one that

was on the car.  Time will tell!

 

Have a good week folks!

 

 

Les

 

Special meeting at 12:45pm was for voting on purchase of used John Deere 4010 Diesel with

3 point hitch and brush hog. Tractor was selling for 7500 dollars, fair market value for that

year it was built, 1960's I believe, has good tires both front (wide front end), rear tractor tires

are practically brand new, no wear or tear on them at all. Front end of tractor has a pin hitch

on it to pull whatever with a tongue on it out backwards, handy for keeping an eye on the

item being pulled. 1000 dollars was for the brush hog, total 8500 dollars. The JD should

solve the problem of mowing the trail along the ROW and the grounds around the museum.

Motion was made, discussed, 2nd and voted on with a unamimous vote yes. Tractor was

driven to the museum later on this afternoon. The body looks in good shape, has been taken

care of over the years. Paint is in good shape. Seat is a replacement black style seat, not great

but acceptable. Had a plug in block heater for cold weather starting. Brush hog is brand name

WOODS, yellow, good trailing tire. Engine hours seemed high, but for the year it was built is

most likely normal. The fenders have some sort of added steel block with tube on top for an

umbrella cover, that did not come with the tractor, but don't think we will need an umbrella

for the driver. With a 3 point hitch, more implements can be added later on if needed. A blade would be nice for pushing snow off the road and clearing the parking lot. Should be a welcome additon to HVRM's fleet of tractors.

 

Added by Tom Travis    

 

       

    

Work Abound at HVRM 8-17-2013

Greetings to all,
 
What a wonderful day it was today at HVRM, perfect temps in the 70's, low humidity,
bright sunny sky, not a drop of rain in sight. Many projects got done today. Train rides
total was 86 for the day. The civil war group shot off their cannon, with a large boom
often. Not so bad noise to the east, but if you where in the shop area, it litterally
gave you a jolt. I could feel the air blast first, then the boom. Lots of visitors were
over the see the civil war men in their uniforms and cannon.  Fun day for everyone.
 
I arrived at 9:00am to find Les over by his passenger car assessing the NKP flat
car that had been coupled up to the his passenger car. Painting still needs to be done
on the east end and needs to get a ladder in there. Plans are to move the consist
a couple of feet to the east later in the day.
 
On my way back to the shop, Joe Baker was busy putting electric outlets back in service after the pole holding up the electric line to the east side of Mulberry St
had broke off at the base during Mondays rain storm with high winds. It happened
at night and litterally broke off at the base of the pole. NIPSCO was called on Tuesday
to disconnect the power line, as the pole was leaning in the road. The power line
never broke at the main pole, so it was holding up the broken pole. Cory, John LaOrange, Joe Kingsbury dug the bottom part of the pole out of the ground and
Norwayne Lumber had a pole to replace it. New pole installed, NIPSCO came out
again to restore power. Joe Baker was replacing the electrical outlets on the new
pole, making them secure for use again. Good Job Joe. Thanks.
 
West shop found Cory, John, Dave, Mark working on leveling the south side of the
dirt floor in the shop in preparation for concrete pour. Sand was brought in from
outside, shoveled on to the floor area, with John an Dave using a 2x6 leveling the
dirt an sand. The entire lenght was leveled, then the back hoe run up an down
packing sand down and more sand brought in, leveled again and then steel
fencing put down to prevent concrete cracking. Pouring concrete date has not been
decided.
 
Mark worked on the EJ&E transfer caboose earlier in the week repainting the outside,
completing orange on the south side, both ends, and black paint on the grating on
the platform and steps. Saturday Mark painted the gray seats on the west platform
and will continue on as time permits.
 
Doug was inside the IC yellow caboose working on wood work for the windows in
the cupola area and priming the new wood white. It is getting closer to having
windows installed soon. The outside is going to be painted IC orange with appropriate Illinois Central lettering from the IC historical society.
 
Bob Barcus worked the gift shop. The local American Legion folks were on the properity to provide lunch for museum members and the public.
 
I was down on friday working on grinding the upper level of the base of the crane.
Priming was done also. Saturday was painting the steel primed areas black again.
Filling the letters in will be done later with a small brush.
 
Les spent the day looking for 17 inch hand grabs for the PRR flat car, no luck,
cept for one 18 inch grab. What I suggested was cutting the longer grabs in half,
installing both ends and cutting the correct lenght  out of the steel, welding the
two pieces together. That is the only solution to this problem. The original pictures
of the flat car had hand grabs, but sometime during its career, they were replaced
with large pieces of steel to better climb up the step to the car. Les has also
acquired a blue print of lettering for TTX, has the dimensions where the letters
and numbers are to be positioned and the height of the numbers an letters position
on the car. He is working on getting copies made for the blueprint and then
finding someone who can make stencils of the lettering.
 
Tuesday myself an the family rode the South Shore to Chicago. Took the 10:55am
train which is the bilevel cars, which I enjoy very much. A good crowd arrived at
Chicago Randolph station. It is interesting to look out the upper level windows,
getting a view on other things from a higher position. Lunch at Macy's Walnut
Room, with Linday Yu, WLS channel 7 newscaster the next table over from us.
Couple of weeks ago on a trip to Chicago, Rosemont near O'Hare, Gibson
Steak restuarant we sas Dennis Rodman, former basketball player for the
Chicago Bulls. Around  4:45pm, we were at the Chicago river, decided to take
a boat tour of the Chicago river of all the buildings along the river. Railroad
bridges of interest is the old bridge that use to bring newsprint into the Chicago
Sun Times building and Chicago Tribune printing buildings. The rail line once
ran to Navy Pier years ago to service ships at the pier with cargo. Navy pier early
time was not a tourist attraction, it was a working ship pier with Navy ships
being tied up there. The Chicago boat tour is a MUST DO if visiting Chicago.
Return to Michigan City was at 7:10pm. I got to see a couple of the new Metra
electric passenger cars, nice looking with bigger window than the old units.
Interesting item on the cars is the number of the train using LED lights, so
easily changed, Metra used train numbers, where South Shore uses number of
electric car for dispatching. SS trains are assigned a scheduled posted number
for trips. New Metra cars have a bathroom on each car, where the old cars did
not, so you made sure that you didn't drink anything before riding. No place to potty.
 
 
Interesting story friday in Michigan City, a man walking on Amtrak high speed rail
line listening to music, did not hear the approaching passenger plane behind him
going over 100 mph. The train hit him square on, he glanced off the nose into the
ditch area. A local La Porte deputy  sheriff, was in the area when someone notified
him of the accident, he was on the scene in minutes, calling in other personell,
finding the man, in the ditch alert and responding with only a broken arm. He was
transported to Michigan city, St Anthony's hospital and is recovering okay. Luck
was on his side friday. Moral of story, don't walk on  active railroad tracks.
 
I left at 4:00pm to attend a wonderful jazz festival in La Porte at Fox park, excellent
music with a large crowd. Music lasted  up to 9:45pm an a large crowd still was
there at the time. Beautiful evening, close to full moon. From my vantage point
I could see the NS rail line across Clear lake, many trains passed in a short
period of time, then at 8:00pm Amtraks Capitol Limited passed thru town going
east. Daylight is growing short every day, soon it will be fall, harvest time an
winter, argh.... School starts Tuesday for me, driving school bus for La Porte.
Many schools in the area started last week including Know, North Judson,
South Central, South Bend area schools, so the busses are back on the road,
please be careful driving early in the morning an afternoon looking out for the kids.
 
Have a safe week.
 
Tom 

This is early August?.....HVRM 8/3/13

Greetings!

 

Our amazingly cool summer continues here in northwestern Indiana.  The temperature at 1:00 this afternoon stood at 79 degrees.  Cool breeze and low humidity.  Plus, we had some heavy, and much needed, rain both yesterday morning and evening!  The corn is high here!

 

Got to the museum to find that the operating crew (John LaOrange/engineer and Mark Knebel/freight conductor) were switching the stored rotary gondolas around.  Leasing company has asked for 12 to be returned, but not just any 12, but certain car numbers!  Getting these lined up from the 25 or so cars on lease, requires a lot of moving around.   Two cars were still be pulled out from the string before they had to break to pull out the passenger train equipment for the first run of the day.  John continued as engineer with Doug Kosloske taking over as passenger conductor with Randall Downs, Joe Kingsbury, Kyle Flannigan and Bill Dauber the car hosts.

 

A museum work crew spent Tuesday and Wednesday tearing out the old crossings at Toto Road and English Lake Road.  County crews arrived on Friday to pave over the trackwork.

 

Grasselli Tower received much attention today.  Steve Newland had brought up the 12 individual window frames for the upper and lower parts of 6 windows earlier in the week.  Joe Baker started in on priming each of these frames.  Since Joe was working on priming, Steve turned his attention to fixing a rotten spot in the floor right at the door of the second story using some of the planks from the old gymnasium floor that Jerry Karacsony had donated years ago to the museum.  These planks have been used for a number of different museum projects over the years, and we still have a number on hand!  Because of the difference in the plank widths, Steve says that this is at least the 2nd patch made on the floor at this location.  Steve Henrichs got to work on a steel box that once was on the wall of Grasselli and he wire wheeled all of the rust and old paint off of it before he primed it in the Shop building.  Later in the day, I helped him carry the box up the Towers stairs where it will eventually be put back on the wall after Steve gives it a final coat of paint.  By the way, a not on the back of this box indicates it was sent to a gentleman by the name of Finley c/o La Salle Street Station in Chicago.  Since Grasselli was built by the New York Central, Mr. Finley was almost certainly a NYC employee.

 

Fred Boyer needed to get a third bolt put on one of the lamp number boxes at the top of 2789's boiler, and I helped him wrestle one of the old wooden extension ladders up against the smokebox door so that he could get this bolt set in.  We discussed where the electrical connections to these lamp boxes, to the classification lights and to the Kanawha's headlight, might have come from.  None of this conduit exists today.  Eventually, our plans are to electrify those appliances and we would like to be able to do it in the same manner as the Chesapeake & Ohio.

 

Tom Travis spent part of the day, sweeping and cleaning the inside of the yellow IC display caboose.  Tom also wire brushed flaking paint from the Purdue crane.  Bob Albert was able to accomplish quite a bit of work in the IC caboose.

 

A big project moved forward as Cory Bennett and Dave Cook leveled the one side of the dirt floor in the West Annex of the Shop.  Eventually, concrete will be poured in this side finally giving us a decent floor for future restoration work.

 

Bing Risley moved the junk steel from the north side of the C&EI work car so that we can eventually get that side of the fire-damaged car cleaned, primed and painted down the road.

 

I noticed that Jon Oram had apparently restored the display layout in the Pullman Troop Sleeper after the cars recent restoration.  "Smoke and steam" now emit from the various steam locomotives that are on the layout.  Nice touch! 

 

Matt Layasko worked on the single bladed Erie semaphore which has been inoperable for some time.  Matt found out the problem was a broken chain, which he replaced.  The semaphore worked perfectly upon the arrival of the last train of the day from La Crosse.

 

Had a good crowd for the three trains today including visitors Wayne Hall and his wife Gloria from Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  Also, Bill Johnson and three of his friends from Kentucky, drove their beautifully restored vintage "shorty" Thomas school bus to the museum.  Bill is involved in the restoration of ex-Union Railroad 0-6-0 #77 at the Kentucky & Tennessee Railroad in Stearns, Kentucky.

 

Keep plugging!  And enjoy your summer!

 

Les