Halloween Train HVRM 10-25-2014

Greetings,
 
Wonderful fall day at North Judson today. In the mid 60's, clear sky, nice breeze.
 
Some items from Friday, Doug, John, Cory, Richard performed a 92 day inspection
on the ERIE 310. Some mechanical issues were taken care of on the tamper. A never 
ending tightening up bolts issue. Bing, worked on the brick sidewalk on the side of
the stairs leading up to Mark's office. When the old steps were removed during renovation
of the building, some bricks were uprooted. Bing cut a tie, enclosed the walkway an
reset the bricks. The above picture shows the finished job. Nice work Bing.
 
Early Saturday morning, the depot workers set up the Halloween decorations for the
dusk train ride to La Crosse. The depot deck looked good. The train had 191 paying
passengers, all who had a good time an nice animal show at La Crosse. The train arrived
back at HVRM around 7pm and where amazed by the lighted signals lining the tracks
an the lighted Grasselli tower on the 2nd level. What a nice display.
 
Earlier that morning, the track crew was out busy at CR 400South taking up the asphalt
an old remnants of the crossing in preparation for replacing ties an rebuilding the
crossing Sunday. Cory, John, Richard, Mark an David were the crew members. Last week
CR 500 South crossing was replaced an asphalted on Tuesday. This makes all the crossings
in Starke county replaced on the CKIN line, cept for the Mulberry St crossing.
 
Les took the pictures above. Also got Steve Newland replacing the downspouts
at Grasselli tower with the manlift also. Nice work Steve.
 
Les worked on painting window frames on the D&RGW passenger cat an doing some
priming rust spots.
 
That is the end of regular season operations, cept for the Christmas trains in
December. Hopefully some inside projects will get started, new woodburning  
stove, rebuilding tool car, an the ND&W diesel engine.
 
That's it for this week, come on down an help out inside the shop buildings, lots
to do everywhere.
 
Tom Travis
 

Cold Day, Hot Trains at HVRM 10-18-14

 

Greetings!

Cold day, with persistent drizzle all morning at Hoosier Valley.  Temp topped out at 49 degrees.  Rain

became intermittent in the afternoon, but weather remained raw.  Meanwhile, the second day of the

museum's pumpkin train operation remained hot!  I arrived late, just as the 10:00 a.m. train was getting

set to depart.  Went down and flagged Mulberry Street for their departure.  Looked like the passenger

count was in the 150's.  Spent the rest of the day flagging Mulberry and helping out Loretta Kosloske in

the depot, selling tickets and checking in reservations.  The trip at 12:30 probably neared 200 riders, with

the 2:30 p.m. train sold out!  We managed to find seats for most walk-up customers on this last run and

the final passenger count came in at just about 250!  So, almost 600 riders for the three trains!  In addition,

most of the passengers opted to purchase pumpkins.  A great day for HVRM!

Needless to say, most museum members were involved in the operation of the trains.  John Kimsey

was the conductor all day, with Doug Kosloske and John DeGan in the cab of GE 95-tonner # 11.  I had

to leave right after the departure of the 2:30 train but on the way home, passed Dave Cook and Cory

Bennett working hard on the road crossing at County Road 500W, preparing for the actual rebuild of the

crossing, which is set to be undertaken tomorrow.  Others working the train included Joe Baker, Bob

Albert, Randall Downs, Fred Boyer and others I probably missed.  Bob Barcus was kept very busy in the

gift shop.

Weather is supposed to improve.  Hope everyone has an enjoyable week.

Les

Active day, great weather, at HVRM 10-11-14

Howdy!

One of those great early fall days!  Lots of sunshine, with temps in the mid-50's moving up to the low 60's by the end of the day.

Only one train today, departing at 1:30 p.m. for La Crosse.  This enabled some switching of equipment after the early morning

Board meeting concluded.  Student engineer John Kimsey was at the throttle much of the day under the watchful eye of

engineer John DeGan, with Bob Albert as Conductor.  Doug Kosloske was also in the crew.  Car hosts included Randall Downs,

Joe Kingsbury and Steve Newland.  Motive power was Interlake Steel GE #11. 

Mark Knebel needed to use the Orton crane along with NKP gondola car 45622, so the crew pulled out the three cars in front

of the crane and set them over on the main line.  Then down to dig out the gon from the storage track on the east end.  Mark

got the crane fired up while this was all going on, then ran down east past the depot while the train crew pushed the cars to

be used on the La Crosse train back into the caboose siding so that the crane could squeeze by for the east end.  After the

crane was in the clear, the crew pulled out the 6 cars to be used on the Lacrosse train and then ran back west and coupled

on to the 3 cars still sitting on the main line.  These were pulled east, with number 11 having no problems with the 9 cars.  After

the 3 cars were put back, the train ran back east past the depot and parked.

Doug needed to do the 92 day inspection on the EL Alco, so he fired the unit up so that it could be moved over to the inspection

pit on Track 2 of the Shop.  Also started up was the U.P. tamper.  The tamper moved out of Track 2 into the clear, the Alco came

out of Track 1 and switched over to Track 2.  Then the tamper moved back in to the Shop, ahead of the Alco.  Lots of interesting

movements for some of our guests who were catching everything with their cameras.

Bob Barcus found a heavy duty peg board in great condition and this was moved into IC display caboose #9914 by Bob, Steve

Newland, Joe Baker and myself.

Meanwhile, Fred Boyer was working on sanding the repaired windowsills up on the second floor of Grasselli Tower (see photo

at left at the end of this report).  Lots of visitors arrived early for the train, so Fred also provided information on the tower itself.

I provided some information to visitors who ventured into the troop sleeper.  Later in the morning, Steve and Fred started in on

one of the towers first floor windows.  This is the first concentrated effort to work on the first floor windows.  Steve is shown in

the photo below, taking the rotten windowsill out.  Needless to say, although rotten, the windowsill didn't want to come out!  Then

in the afternoon, Fred cut a new sill out of very heavy wood stock, and I helped him move it into place with Fred giving it a coat

of primer paint to protect it.

The new galvanized gutters for the tower have arrived.  Hopefully, they will be installed sometime before winter sets in.

The third photo shows the Orton Purdue crane at work taking the old ballast/dirt out of the gondola and putting it into the pile

next to Main Street.  At this point, Mark was in the gon supervising the dropping of the clamshell, with Cory Bennett at the controls.

Also working on this project, was Dave Cook who was operating the Payloader and keeping the ballast/dirt piles in reasonable

order!

There seemed to be a good crowd on the train today, although I don't have an actual count of passengers.  There were also

quite a few visitors who toured the grounds, but did not ride the train.  This is okay, as we are a museum and an educational

organization and always glad to show visitors around.  The signals all worked today.  Erie semaphore 921.1 has been a bit balky

in the past, but performed perfectly today.  It too, must have been enjoying the great weather!

Others working at the museum today included Loretta Kosloske selling tickets and later riding the train and Bob Barcus handling

gift shop duties in the depot.  Bob Jachim was flagman and Margret Cook and Diane Bennett provided lunch.  Bing Risley was

cutting grass on his riding lawn mower. 

Hoping the weather holds and that everyone has a great week!

Les 

    

   

Blustery day with all hands on deck at HVRM 10/4/14

Greetings -

Wicked weather at North Judson today with high temp around 45 degrees and a howling wind.  Nevertheless, the

three Hoosier Valley "pumpkin trains" were operated as scheduled.  All museum members were involved in their

operation.  NKP caboose #471 and EL caboose #C345 were added to the regular consist to provide enough seats

inside as Katy open air car #13833 saw very few riders braving the elements.

Train crew included John DeGan engineer, Steve Henrichs student engineer and Doug Kosloske conductor.  Car

hosts included Joe and Louise Kingsbury, Randall Downs, Fred Boyer, Steve Newland, Les Beckman and Rich

Warner.  EL S1 Alco #310 provided the power for all the runs.  The Mulberry Street flagman was Bob Jachim with

Mark Knebel handling the over-the-road flagman duties.  Bob Barcus was in the gift shop with Loretta Kosloske

and Les Beckman handling ticket sales and ticket pickups.  Judy Boyer sold items out on the depot platform, a very

cold job for sure!

Cory Bennett, Tom Travis, Dave Cook, Joe Baker, Mark, Loretta and Rich did the honors out at the "pumpkin patch".

Margrett Cook provided a hot lunch. 

Note that some museum members did "double duty"; handling more than one job today.  Other activities at the

museum were curtailed in order to get the pumpkin trains run successfully. 

Ridership numbers were as follows:

10:00 train - 124

12:30 train - 145

2:30 train   -   96

Total ridership was 365.  Thanks to all the museum members for a job well done!

Les