Greetings Winter Season enthusiasts!
Well....maybe not. This has been a tough winter for us here in Northwestern Indiana. Much snow and frigid temps have frayed the edge of many folks. Snow piled everywhere! Tom Travis told of a particular bad corner in LaPorte where high snow piles at the corner caused a couple of serious accidents. Of course, not only us in the Hoosier state are feeling the winter, as it had been bad in many of parts of the good old U.S.A.
The last two Saturdays at the museum saw heavy snow and horrid road conditions, keep attendance down. Just 4 people showed up last week. We had an overnight snow again last night and road conditions were again poor at best. Temps stayed in the upper teens and we had light snow again just about the whole day. Despite this, we had a number of folks show up today, although there was no formal Board meeting.
Cory Bennett pulled the flat tire off of our manlift and went out and had it repaired. A bad connection at the rim was the verdict. Some cleaning up of the rim and the tire was pronounced as fixed. Cory said, "let's hope so or we'll be back!"
Loretta Kosloske reported a number of Guest Engineers have signed up from states beyond Indiana and Illinois, including a phone call today from a gentleman in Tennessee who had visited HVRM when Nickel Plate 2-8-4 #765 was last here.
Fred Boyer worked on sanding down previously applied Bondo and then grinding some rough spots under the roof overhangs on the IC yellow caboose. Fred keeps finding red paint from the original Illinois Central paint job. Meanwhile, Bob Albert, using some of the old gymnasium floor pieces that we have on hand, worked on fixing the bad floor section in front of one of the caboose doors. The floor in now finally finished!
Cory and company used the Backhoe to pull the Porter diesel from the old section of the Shop into the West Annex, which is insulated. Temps in the old section peaked at 27 degrees whereas one torpedo heater got the West Annex up to 47 degrees by the afternbboon. Quite a difference. A regular furnace of some type would actually make it toasty in the West Annex. Discussions on that are ongoing.
After moving the Porter, Cory changed the oil and filter on the Backhoe.
The warmer temps in the West Annex enabled Steve Henrichs to move the long pipe for the Grasselli Tower electrical connections over and he managed to get the pipe completely primed.
Sparky Byers wanted to put a 4' florescent fixture into the cab of the Porter for light when working on the electrical cabinet. Believe it or not, we found a brand new fixture on top of a cabinet in the Old Shop along with a whole boxful of 4' florescent tubes! Sparky put some screws into the wood in the cab roof and hung the fixture. First tube lit up like a charm. Second one....no. Tried two tubes. Neither of them worked. Then exchanged tubes and the good tube one did not work and one of the bad ones did. Joe Kingsbury took the fixture done and worked on it and eventually pronounced it as "junk". Knew there was a reason we found that stuff so easily! Went out a purchased a couple of portable lights to use instead.
We all chipped in and purchased some pizzas for lunch. Got the great news that a Tamper has reportedly been donated to us. This will greatly aid in trackwork, which is an ongoing necessity at Hoosier Valley.
Tom and I have talked about painting the train order stand and finding some place to put it up at the museum. I looked for the stand and found it but also discovered that the lower "circular" connection was missing. I wandered around the shop looking for it and finally found it on one of the shelves that were rescued from the old Erie Milk Station building. We now have a winter project.
Cory, John DeGan, Steve Newland, Rich Warner and Randall Downs stood around and talked about the coupler and its bent shank that had been removed from the one end of the Porter. Apparently the company that John LaOrange approached stated that they didn't think they could heat and then bend the 6" solid square shank. Steve checked over the coupler and said that he thought that the shank might not be solid, but hollow. Found a long piece of wood and was able to insert it nearly back to the hole for the pin that holds the coupler/shank in place. An interesting discovery. Might be able to heat and bend the shank after all.
I spent a bit of time removing some yellow tape residue from the other coupler on the Porter. By then, it was 3:00 and still snowing, covering all of our cars. Enough for one winter day. We turned off the lights and locked up. Next Saturday's another day.
Richard Warner and Joe Kingsbury have completed the repairs to the John Deere tractor. The
tractor needed to be split apart to repair the PTO problem. Richard also replaced some items
that were in marginal condition. Transmission oil was replaced also. Works great now for the
brush whacker for next summer.
Someone spent a lot of time with the back hoe tractor cleaning out the drives around the
museum this past week of deep snow. Thanks very much.
Talk of acquiring an old house north of Bings home at a Sheriffs sale coming up later in the month.
The house would be torn down, as it is now unoccupied and deserted. It is a large lot and zoned
for dwellings at this time. Would clean up the corner also. A couple of large trees occupy the
properity, one which is dead, which would burn nicely in the wood stove in the shop building.
Les
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