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
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