Paint/no paint at HVRM on May 10, 2014

 

Greetings!

The complete story on the numbering an painting for the Illinois Central caboose

is on RYPN, intechange, Caboose Identification - A long shot.

 

Give good details on its progress and completion.

 

Arrived at the museum about 8:00 a.m. just after the Board of Director meeting had started.  I mentioned

that Richard Vetter of RISX had delivered two new bridge plates for TTX 475037, but otherwise I remained

quiet.  Doug Kosloske mentioned that both GE #11 and Alco #310 were available for passenger runs.

EL 310 was the motive power for the days train operations.

Tom Travis advised me earlier in the week of the big news that IC display caboose #9914 was moved

out of the Shop and over to the display track across from the depot.  The floor of the car still has to be

sanded down and treated and the interior displays still have to then be placed into the car, but this was

certainly a move in the right direction.  The car certainly looks great (see photo) and the museum members

who worked on it, should feel very proud of their efforts.

My plan for the day was to get the bridge plates for the TTX flatcar cleaned with lacquer thinner and

then painted.  I wasn't sure if I could get the top bridge plate off of the bottom one due to the weight, but

after I scrounged around the Shop and managed to find a couple of additional pallets, I was able to just

slide the top bridge plate over to the other pallets.  They cleaned up and I found some primer and painted

both of them.  My plan was to come back in the afternoon and try to get the two plates turned over if possible

and then clean and put primer on the other sides.  Never got to that point as the primer didn't completely

dry, probably due to the humidity.  The temp was in the mid-70's all day with sun most of the time.  Anyway,

that part of my plan will have to wait until the next day at the museum.

My other planned project for the day was to get a finish coat of light green paint on the lid of the coal bin

located next to the watchman's crossing shanty, and also on some spots of peeling paint on the shanty

itself.  Unfortunately, when I opened the can of paint, I found it looked like cottage cheese.  Apparently it

had froze over our tough winter.  One more plan scratched until Steve Newland can get a new can of the

paint from Sherwin-Williams.

Speaking of Steve, he had the brackets made for the re-installation of the cast iron radiators in Grasselli

Tower and was giving them a coating of primer.   

Other jobs going on at Hoosier Valley today included some work on the far end, although I never made

it down there to see exactly what was going on.  I know that Cory Bennett had the Backhoe pulled out and

was using it down there in the morning and that after lunch, they fired up the U.P. tamper in the afternoon

and it appeared to be over near the State Route 39 crossing.  Odds are that some kind of trackwork was

being done.

Passenger train had John LaOrange as engineer with Bob Albert, John Kimsey and Steve Henrichs as the

crew.  Randall Downs and Bill Dauber were the car hosts in the Katy open car and the LIRR coach.  The last

run of the day was to La Crosse, which normally has the diesel locomotive on the front end out of North Judson

and then turned on the wye at La Crosse to get to the other end of the train so that it is again on the front end

for the return trip.  Strange to see the Alco S-1 pushing the train from the museum, which is what is normally

only done for the shorter runs to English Lake.  Turns out that the C&I had some type of a problem with the wye

and therefore it was not available to the HVRM train crew to use.  Thus the push all the way to La Crosse!

In the afternoon, with my planned painting projects not available, I found a long piece of 3/4" outside diameter

pipe to see if it would go through the holes on the deck of TTX 475037 where the bridge plates will eventually

by installed.  Quickly found out that it wouldn't due to some rough material on the inside of these holes.  Did

some work on them, and finally got all four of these cleaned out enough on both ends so that I managed to

work the pipe through.  I've included a photo of these holes on one end of the flat car to exhibit what I am

talking about.

Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 #765 was running on Norfolk Southern's old NKP line through Knox on Saturday

and a few HVRM museum members "snuck out" to go over to see it.  We also had a few visitors who stopped

by after they had photographed the Employees Special as it went through northern Indiana.  Memories of

the Berks visits to HVRM in 2009 and 2011!

Probably missed a few things going on today.  Sorry about that!  Hope everyone has a great week.

Les