Summer hanging in there at HVRM 10/12/13

Greetings!

 

The calendar says Fall, but old Mother Nature wants to keep summer around for a while yet.  Sunny morning in North Judson with the temp getting up to 83 degrees.

 

Museum Board meeting this morning at 8:00 a.m.  Cement for the West Annex to the Shop is still on track (pun intended)!  Also discussed putting new muffler or

long pipe on the Long Island passenger car to direct exhaust away from the side where the passengers load.

 

Steve Henrichs was using the Man Lift as he continued scrapping, priming and painting the final few feet of the roof eaves on Grasselli Tower.  Joe Baker and Steve

Newland worked on the interior, including installation of the new second floor windows.

 

Since Steve Henrichs was using the Lift, I hung around the Pullman Troop Sleeper and gave some of our many visitors information on the car and also on Metra #1529

which is coupled to it.  Lots of visitors today with many from Illinois including 6 different gentlemen who operated GE diesel #11 as part of the museums Guest

Engineer Program (GEP).  Many of these folks stayed around to ride the only train of the day, a 1:30 p.m. departure for La Crosse.  That train was well patronized, with

riders in both of the open air flat cars (MKT #13833 and NKP #1946), in LIRR passenger car #2937 and in two of the cabooses, EJ&E #184 and B&LE #1989.   Two

of the other cabooses were also on the train, but not utilized for passengers.  

 

Finally was able to use the Lift in the afternoon and I started scrapping the windows on passenger car #899 to remove paint that I had slopped on the glass.  Eventually it

clouded over and  the wind picked up, but the temp remained in the 70's and the threatened rain held off.  Bing Risley stopped by to talk and told me that he and Mark

Knebel had finally been able to remove the old tree stump that sat outside the refrigerator car building over on Arlington Street.

 

There was probably things going on in the Shop building but I never made it over there today.  

 

Passenger train arrived back in North Judson and Loretta Kosloske told me that they had 147 riders.  With the GEP participants earlier, if was a very nice day for Hoosier

Valley to say the least!

 

Packed it in about 5:00 p.m.  A long day for sure.  Enjoy the coming week.  Columbus Day observed this coming Monday, so kids may be off, so drive carefully.

 

 

Les      

Record Crowd at Pumpkin Patch 10-19-2013

Greetings to all,
 
Great day at the ole Pumpkin Patch. Just a bit on the cool side for riding in the

open air car, but many people did with many blankets wrapped around them.

Packed passenger car, with overflow to the Erie C345 bay window caboose.

Over 430 people rode the trains, with what I think about 300 pumpkins were

sold. One of the best turnouts in a long time.

 

First train was sort of late getting to platform to load passengers. Doug was

training a couple of conductor trainees, an it resulted in lots of people on the

platform cold and lots of figgety kiddos. But once loaded, everyone got settled

down for pumpkins.

 

Fred was in the shop working on the IC caboose cupola, found some more

rust that needed to be taken care of. Worked on the caboose till called to be

engineer for the final run of the day. 

 

Steve Newland worked on Grasselli tower windows, in between helping Richard

with the pumpkins at the SR 10 pumpkin patch.

 

The back hoe tractor transmission has been reinstalled, an Richard spent some

time this past week tightening up bolts, so its almost ready to run, put in oil and

some other things need to be done.

Bob an Loretta manned the gift shop, John LaOrange was engineer for two runs,

Fred for the final run of the day, an Doug was conductor. Everyone who was there

kept busy all day. Joe was in the passenger car, Randall an Matt on the open air

car, and myself in the Erie C345. The local VFW provided lunch for many hungry

folks.

 

Thats about it for this week, getting light later each day, dark earlier each night,

weather next week wil be cold and possible snow flakes. Too early for that

new. Drive safe everyone

 

Tom

Rain In The Pumpkin Patch 10-5-2013

Greetings to all in this wild month of October weather wise. Tropical storm situation
in Pensacola FL, just where I'n headed Wednesday for 5 days, snow 3 foot deep
in the Dakota's, extreme fire conditions still in CA, massive amounts of rain in
the NW US. Where is it going to stop, and what will the winter be like around here.
 
Well any indication, it was wet in North Judson today for the Pumpkin Trains
to SR 10 park. This morning started out on the muggy side, train crew had
the entire train out in front of the depot for possible large crowds. I helped
Loretta punch tickets as she worked the cash/credit card machine, many were
prepaid, so made it easy on her. Lots of extra pumpkins tickets were sold at
the ticket window. Richard was busy trying to get freon into the Long Island coach
before departure at 10am. The coach cooled somewhat, but got a full charge
when the car returned from the first run. The wind seemed to pick up on the
way back to North Judson from English Lake, so rain was imminent soon.
 
Getting a sandwich at the American Legion tent before the next train run, gave every
one a break for a few minutes. The second run went fine except for the arrival back at
North Judson depot, it started to pour buckets, lots of people braved the rain and
got wet running to their cars, but some riders stayed on the train for an extra 10 minutes and it pretty much quit raining. Next train went off fine, cept for arrival at
the park, it poured buckets again, most of the pumpkins were snatched up by parents
in record time and reboarding the train quickly. A lot of riders opted to ride the coach
back to the depot to get out of the rain on the open air car. A bag of small wash
clothes were provided by Mark for folks to dry off with. At least some of the kids
were dry again. I counted almost 6 babies, 6 months or younger today on the train,
one itty bitty one was only 8 weeks old, maybe a new record for new railfans some
day. A total ridership today was 243 for 3 runs, not all that bad for a rainy day.
 
Steve Hendrichs and Steve Newland worked on Grasselli tower, Steve H using the
manlift to get some more painting done under the eaves, Steve N doing wood work
inside the upper level of the tower.
 
Fred Boyer was working on the IC caboose today, did not even get a chance to
see what has been accomplished in the last 2 weeks.
 
Not much else going on around the museum work wise.
 
Lots of conductor trainees on the job today and a good size crew too. Nobody told
Randall that the train time had changed today, so no bull horn narration on the first
run, as he missed the train departure. But darn the bad luck he caught up with the train at the park, only to discover his batterys in the bullhorn were dead, but Randall being Randall, he got Matt to run him down to buy more batterys, so for the 2nd an 3rd run
full narration of every twig and colored leaf was done. All in jest Randall, I had
even thought to hide his bullhorn when he went for batterys, but decided not to,
fearing he might return bigger an louder for the Halloween train.
 
In all, things went well, no  major problems.
 
Next Saturday at 8am is HVRM board meeting most likely in the depot.
Please attend to hear good news.
 
October 19th is the next 3 trips for the Pumpkin Patch train. I will not be at
HVRM on the 12th or 26th of October.
 
Have a safe week, drive safe, its getting dark earlier every evening now, watch out
for goblins out playing in the leaves.
 
Tom