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