Bright blue, light green and digging dirt at HVRM 7/25/15

Gents -

Arrived at the museum around 8:30 a.m. to see this site at the depot (see first photo)!  What's going on?  Turns out our normal water bill from the town of North Judson is for about 1,700 gallons of water per month.  Last month we supposedly used 58,000 gallons!  Obviously, we have a leak somewhere.  This is the effort to find it around the depot earlier in the week.  Unfortunately, the leak was not found there.  The second photo was taken a bit later in the morning after they started digging up the old water line. In this shot, Cory Bennett is operating the back hoe, with Mark Knebel down in the ditch while Tom Rainford gives directions.  When I left at about 2:30 p.m., this ditch was about four times longer, and the leak still hadn't been found.

A couple of throttle times today.  John DeGan was the instructing engineer with Bjarne Henderson as conductor.  Later, I noticed Steve Henrichs as the engineer with Joe Kingsbury, Bud Tibbie and Randall Downs as car hosts on the regular passenger trains.  Quite a few visitors and riders today including two bus loads of kids from a summer camp up in Gary, Indiana.  Good news is that Long Island passenger coach #2937 has had its air conditioning fixed and was in the trains consist.  With temps approaching 90 degrees today, that was really good news!  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the lights on Bessemer & Lake Erie caboose #1989 and, although Joe Baker tried to find the problem, the caboose was not in the train linedup today.  

After painting the dark green trim on the Mulberry Street crossing shanty last Saturday, I decided to tackle the coal bin.  The third and fourth photos show the before and after views.  Looks a little bit better I think.

Steve Newland has recently started work on the south facing wall on Grasselli Tower which was pealed badly.  The fifth photo shows him hard at work  while the sixth shot captures the patch already redone.

Doug Kosloske was working on GE #11 in the Shop.

Finally, a couple of shots taken around the museum.  The seventh photo shows the start of the flooring in C&EI tool car #A-1054.  And in the last photo, the results of someone (perhaps Mark?) giving the disconnected push car as coat of blue paint is shown.  Once removed, visitors may wonder why some pieces of Hoosier Valley's ballast were given bright blue paint!

Supposed to be 90 degrees this upcoming week.  Stay cool as best you can. 

Les

Hot, hot and moving about....at Hoosier Valley 7/18/15

Greetings!

Temps in the mid-90's at North Judson today.  Got to the museum in time for the regular bi-monthly membership/business meeting.  After the meeting, I found some dark green paint and started painting the trim on the Mulberry Street watchman's crossing shanty.  Sweat pouring off!

Tom Travis reported that long time member Harold Russell had passed away.  Harold had once worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

After the meeting, I found a can of dark green paint and started painting the trim on the Mulber  

We had at least two Guest Engineers this morning.  Doug Kosloske was engineer for the passenger trains today, with Bob Albert as conductor.  LIRR passenger coach 2937 still out of service due to air conditioning problems so train consisted of NKP bay window caboose #471, MKT open air car, EJ&E transfer caboose #184 and B&LE cupola caboose #1989.   

Bob Jachim provided crossing protection at the Mulberry Street crossing today while Tom Travis travelled out in his van to provide protection for the trains at Arlington Street, CR500 South, CR400 South, English Lake Road, Toto Road and CR650 West.

They decided to move the recently sold Porter 0-4-2T steam engine # 6 over to the loading area which necessitated switching cars around.  Also being moved over to the loading area was privately owned Plymouth diesel #1881.  Some photos of the moves are included.  Interlake Steel GE diesel #11 was used for  this operation with John LaOrange at the throttle and Cory Bennett and Tom Rainford on the ground.

Steve Newland recently applied new oil based primer to a patch on the south side of Grasselli Tower and today he put a coat of light green paint over that primer.  This side of Grasselli had experienced a lot of paint peeling and hopefully this new primer will solve that problem.

Stay safe everyone.  Enjoy the summer weather.

Les   

A hot and muggy day at HVRM 6/13/15

Greetings!

Managed to make it down for most of the Board meeting at Hoosier Valley yesterday.  Sunny all day with temps well into the upper 80's and

high humidity.  Good day to make one sweat!

There were a number of guest engineers running GE Interlake Steel number 11 this morning.  Steve Henrichs asked me to flag Arlington Street

and CR500W on the last of these runs so he wouldn't have to get off of the caboose to flag each of those crossings, and I obliged.  This was

a definite non-sweat job, but I forgot my ear protection.  The horn on the back of B&LE caboose #1989 is LOUD!

Back at the museum after these runs, Steve, who was conductor for the day, is shown in the first photo making sure that the brake valve on

EJ&E caboose #184 was operating correctly (it was!) and then is shown in the second photo just a bit later putting the air hoses on the EJ&E

and B&LE cabooses together after the regular passenger train was coupled to the Bessemer caboose.  Yes, that is Steve in the second photo,

even though his face is hidden!  John DeGan was engineer for the day on both the guest engineer runs and the regular passenger trains.

I went up to Grasselli Tower and painted white numbers on the five levers that Steve had painted earlier.  Steve thought that the levers looked

okay without the white painted numbers, and he may be right.  I told him that if he didn't like the numbers in white, he could paint over them with

the red, blue and green paint.  Results are in the third photo.

Fred Boyer continued his work on the exterior of the C&EI tool car using the green man lift  to get up to the top of the car as you can see in the

fourth photo.  Fred has done a heck of a lot of work on C&EI #A-1054.

Finally, in the last photo, new member Ryan Osmolski is shown cleaning up the B&O steam whistle that was on the Notre Dame & Western

Porter diesel.  Looking better already!

Other members were working on HVRM track, Bing Risley was cutting grass, Bob Barcus was in the gift shop, Loretta Kosloslke was the

ticket agent for the day while Bob Jachim provided crossing protection for trains at Mulberry Street.

Stay cool this week!

Les