Night ride and other stuff at HVRM on 10/24/15

Hello folks!

Board meeting at Hoosier Valley this morning.  Interesting discussions and reports.

We had a special Guest Engineer after the meeting.

Tom Travis, Bud Tibbie and I moved the new screen doors that Ross Robinson has built for B&LE caboose #1989 into the GTW caboose for safekeeping.  We will try to work on these after the Bessemer caboose is taken out of service once the passenger train season ends in December.

I tried to repair some of the brick in the pathway leading into the Erie shed.  Worked out okay, except I have to spread some sand in between the various reworked brick.

I did some more lettering on the door of the Road Crossing Watchman's Shanty.  The day had been mild but cloudy and threatening all day and then all of a sudden, the sky opened up and we got a very heavy shower for a good 10 minutes.  We need the rain.  With things now wet, I wandered down to the Shop and found work ongoing on the track at the back end of the West Annex of the Shop.  The first photo shows Dave Cook (left) and Tom Rainford, spreading stone amongst the now leveled track while Tom Travis looks on.  The second shot shows Cory Bennett in the Payloader getting set to pick up the stone and move it toward the back wall for the boys to get to it easier.  In the third photo, Tom is getting a shovel full out of the bucket while the others spread theirs in between the ties.  Next job to be done before adding the cement floor will be to tamp the ballast down between the ties.

Bob Barcus was Conductor for the Halloween Train to La Crosse today and he got ahold of some of us to try to find some car hosts for the run.  I ended up hosting folks in the B&LE caboose.  Others similarly employed included Tom Travis, Bud Tibbie, Joe Kingsbury, Randall Downs, Matt Downs and Richard Warner.  Doug Kosloske was engineer with Bob Albert as fireman/front end brakeman.  John DeGan fired up Alco # 310 as standby motive power.  This train is our only train of the day and leaves at 4:00 p.m. with a special live animal show outside of the La Crosse Library for riders.  Departure from La Crosse is about 6:00 which means a night ride back to the museum.  Doug lights up his kerosene marker lights on the caboose for the return trip and I tried to get a shot of those markers after our arrival back at the North Judson depot (photo 4).   Also tried to get a shot looking down the track toward Grasselli Tower, the Shop building and some of our signals, the results of which are shown in the last photo.

Have a great week everyone!

Les

   

Pumpkins Trains 10-17-2015

Greetings,

A cool but beautiful day Saturday for the end of a very successful Pumpkin Train event. A total
of over 480 plus people rode the train for Saturday. Many happy  riders with the best pumpkins
for last.
 
Trains crew consisted of John LaOrange as engineer, Bob Albert conductor. Tom Travis EJ&E car, Randall
Down & Matt Downs in the MKT open  air car, Joe Kingsbury Richard Warner LIRR coach, Bud Erie caboose,
Tom NKP caboose.  In the depot were Bob Barcus an Loretta Kosloske. Margret  Cook provide lunch. Cory
Bennitt, David Cook, Mark Kniebel set up an put out pumpkins at the park. Mark Kniebel provided road
crossing guard, Bob Jachim provided crossing guard at museum & IN 10 & 39 crossing.
 
Fred Boyer came over only to look around after having bypass surgery some 10 days ago, looks good.
Elmer Manning had a hospital visit an has an inner ear infection, send him a greeting at elm.mm3@comcast.net

to cheer him up.
 
A group of 14 HVRM workers got together at the Wooden Nickel for dinner Saturday evening, good  time
had by everyone.
 
Next week at 8am is monthly board meeting in the depot. November is monthly membership meeting
is now at 1 pm on November 21st.
 
Everyone have a good week, enjoy the last nice days of summer, on November 1st fall back 1 hour at 2am.
 
Tom Travis  

Pumpkin Train Attendance Great on 10-10-2015

Greetings,
 
Saturday dawned downright cold here at North Judson. But it  warmed up to comfortable
temps by noon. Not a cloud in the sky, made it a great day for the pumpkin patch.
 
I arrived late Saturday morning for the 10am train, having slept in a bit longer than normal.
The train was pulling out of the station as I arrived. Went to have a cup of coffee in the
kitchen car an a bite to eat, then into the depot to see what was going on. Helped Bob
Barcus with tickets an orange tickets for pumpkins an putting them into a box for later
retrieval. Soon people started to show up for the 12:30pm train an handed out prepaid
tickets packets. Kept the ticket lines down to a minimum. About 12:15 a request for a
car host on the EJ&E handicap car went out, I volunteered in a flash. Ran the wheel
chair lift for a number of folks during the afternoon. Enjoyed the nice train ride up to
English Lake an out to the park area. Unloading an loading have been speeded up with
newly dumped gravel spotted for steps on all cars. The train was unloaded in record time.
 
Cory, David, Mark were busy at the park with placing pumpkins on the grass. Mark provided
crossing protection at grade crossing. A larger force for IN 10 grade crossing was in effect
during the day, plus signals worked great also.
 
Bob, Loretta worked in the gift shop/ticket areas. The G guage train ran for the crowds of
kids inside the depot. Plenty of pottys spotted out back of the depot  helped in keeping long
lines inside to a minimum.
 
The monthly board meeting has been moved to October 24th at 8am, due to on going
operations on the 10th. Next weekend will have 3 more pumpkin trains. A count of just
over 500 people was reported for Saturday. A membership meeting will be held November
21st at 1pm in the depot. Nominations for President, Treasurer, 2 director positions are
up for vote in January. Sign up sheet is in the kitchen car. Saw Joe Baker working near
 Tom  Tittles storage van putting in an electrical panel an possibly a yard light on a wood
pole. Engineer was John DeGan, Conductor was Steve Hendrics. A number of other members
were car hosts on different cars for the day. Richard Warner, Joe Kingsbury, Randall Downs,
Bud, Bob Albert made up the car hosts. Not much of anything else was done for the day.
 
See you next week for the pumpkin trains.
 
Tom Travis 
           

Identities restored at HVRM 10/7/15

Greetings!

Had an opportunity to go to Hoosier Valley today, a rather rare Wednesday happening.  I wanted to try to finish the renumbering on the cab sides of our historic 44-ton Whitcomb after Mark Knebel recently painted the unit.  As you can see from the first photo, I managed to get the job done!  A word about the number.  For years, the Whitcomb has carried the number 27.  This is not a number that the unit wore in regular service, but at the time, we did not have the units history.  We now know that history and one of the numbers she carried was 509 which is the number used in this repainting.  Mark has asked me to put some protection in the four number board on the units hoods to help prevent water from entering.  A project for the near future!

Another recent Knebel project was the repainting of a couple of EJ&E artifacts; a Fairmont Boom Car and a push car with an installed tool box for supplies.  Mark painted these in blue and they look sharp sitting on display.  He added the old EJ&E lettering except omitted the EJ&E number of the push car.  I added this number (G1) a few weeks ago but since I didn't have a roman letter style "G", I used an "O".  Looked pretty crappy I must admit.  Today I touched up that letter, and the second photo shows one of those revised letters.  I think it looks a bit better now.  You may think differently!

Great weather today.  Sunny and in the 70's.  Had a visitor while I was working and was able to show him the Shop and Grasselli Tower in between these projects.  Lots of minor stuff like this at the museum that doesn't take a heck of a lot of work but which adds enjoyment for those who visit.  If you've ever thought of coming out, we can always find something for you to do! 

Les   

Cool wind blows summer away at Hoosier Valley 10/3/15

Gents -

Not a long report today as most of the museum members were working the first Saturday of Pumpkin trains.  I was ticket collector and host in

B&LE caboose #1989.  Temps were in the low 50's with a brisk wind blowing.  Not many riders chose the open air car today. 

Joe Baker did some additional electrical work.

Bud Tibbie planted some mums that Loretta Kosloske secured earlier in the week (see photo).

Tom Travis represented the museum at a train show in Plymouth, Indiana today.

Jon Oram has recently add a new farm field to the N scale display layout in the Pullman Troop Sleeper.

Good to see Dan and Dee Siple, who rode the second train today.

I've also included a photo of folks on the second of the three trains as they picked up their pumpkins out at the pumpkin patch.  New gravel was

recently put down in an effort to make unloading of the cars a bit easier and some of that effort is visible in this photo.  

Have a great week!

Les