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
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