Dismal day, but progress, at HVRM 4/25/15

Greetings!

Good day to celebrate an Anniversary (mine) but a horrible weather day in North Judson!  Temps in the 40's with a steady rain all morning slacking off to a light rain in the afternoon.  Good day to sit around and "chew the fat", but work continued at HVRM despite the weather.

Big event of the day was the firing up of Erie S1 #310 to do some switching.  The crew of the Alco consisted of John LaOrange at the throttle with Bob Albert and Mark Knebel on the ground to handle the switching chores.  After firing up the old 1947 unit, it was backed up and coupled to the dead GE 95 tonner #11 and then the C&EI tool car #A-1054, both of which were pulled out of the Shop and John and Bob moved them across Mulberry Street next to the HVRM depot.  Joe Kingsbury had fired up ND&W Porter #5332 and after the 310 and consist was in the clear, Joe and Mark ran the unit out of the Shop and into the track on the north side of the building and into the clear.  John then pushed number 11 and the A-1054 back into the Shop, uncoupling the tool car at the far west end of the West Annex Shop track., then pulled the GE clear.  Joe and Bob then ran the Notre Dame unit east, cleared the switch and went back into the Shop (first two photos in the sequence below showing ND&W 5332 ready to back into the Shop and then entering the Shop door).

The crew later in the day did some additional switching, as can be seen in the photo below of the 310 shoving N&W hopper #40639 west toward the yard.

I managed to get a few things done at the museum in the rain, including planting some new plants in one of the flower beds.

Bob Barcus ran the gift shop today.

Finally, as you are aware, a contractor has been putting new ties in the line between English Lake and the museum.  The final photo shows some of the results of this effort near CR650W with the old ties (marked earlier in green by Mark) and a new tie.  Work goes on!

Despite the lousy weather today, it's supposed to slowly improve each day with temps near 70 by the end of the week.  Next Saturday kicks off our regularly scheduled passenger carrying trains.  Help of all kinds is needed, and APPRECIATED!  Please give it your consideration!

Have a great week!

Les