Threat of snow, meeting, fail to halt work at HVRM 1/18/14

Greetings!

Threat of snow ignored as work at Hoosier Valley continued today. 

I arrived at 9:00 a.m. and did a bit of sweeping of the depot platform.  Pulled a bad wooden board from the coal bin next

to the watchman's shanty, but failed to find the same style in the Shop.  Bob Jachim later told me that the old wood pile

that he used to build the bin, is now gone.

In the Shop, Sparky Byers, John LaOrange, Ben Byers and Jacob Byers were working on getting the bent coupler out from

the front end of the ND&W Porter diesel.  After much work, they finally got it done!  Ben and Jacob put it on a cart and

wheeled it out to the Shop's east entrance, where Bing Risley used his loader to put it in the bed of John's truck.  A repair

will be attempted.

Meanwhile, Cory Bennett used the green man lift to take down the lightweight blue fiberglass separating curtain between

the original old McGill Shop and the newer West Annex.  He then put up the old canvas tarp, which should supply a better

temperature protection between the insulated West end and the original Shop.

Fred Boyer continued applying Bondo to the yellow IC caboose.  Bjarne Henderson showed up with the lettering diagrams

for this caboose, which were recently sent to him by the Illinois Central Historical Society.  Bjarne had been waiting for these

for some time and its great to hear the they have finally been received.  The diagrams are for Illinois Central lettering with

the "Main Line of Mid-America" slogan and the IC "split rail" herald.  These will eventually applied to the caboose, which

will be repainted orange.  We will have to figure out what number to put on the car since we have never found the original

IC road number.

The forementioned canvas curtain works, but there was a gap of a few inches, so Dave Cook, Bjarne, Tom Travis and

yours truly helped as Cory attached a separate canvas strip to the bottom edge of the tarp.

After lunch, the Annual meeting of the museum was held at the North Judson Public Library.  A good attendance for the

meeting, even though a good snow was forecast, and had started to fall just before the meeting commenced.  All of the

incumbents, President Bennett, Treasurer Bob Barcus and Directors LaOrange and Joe Kingsbury, were re-elected.

Supposed to be some frigid temps coming in next week, so stay warm everyone!

Les