Greetings!
Old man winter is apparently still on vacation as the above average temps continued at Hoosier Valley this past Saturday. Got up to 63 degrees according to the thermometer on the Road Crossing Shanty!
Speaking of the Shanty, the nice weather enabled me to work on the second section of the lettering on the door (see the first photo).
Paul Bunyan, er, correction....Mark Knebel, continued cutting down trees along the right of way northwest of Arlington Street between the track and English Lake Road.
Santa trains continued and all 3 trains were sold out again. Motive power was EL Alco # 310, with John DeGan at the throttle and Bob Albert the conductor. Bud Tibbie and Joe Kingsbury in their conductor uniforms, handled the crowd in Long Island passenger coach 2937, assisted by Rich Warner. Santa of course, was there too. Loretta says a few spaces are available for just one of the trains next Saturday, and those will probably be gone early this week.
Since I was working on the Shanty lettering, I didn't get a chance to take any photos although I did walk back to the West Annex of the Shop and noticed that there was work going on in C&EI tool car #A-1054 on the floor and that the center section of concrete had been poured earlier in the week between the rails on the track section. Photos coming in the future.
Later in the afternoon, I noticed activity down around out in front of the east side of the Shop. First, GE diesel #11 had pulled number 2789 outside. Then Cory Bennett and John LaOrange were working with the payloader on a steel light pole. And then when I looked down there...holy cow! Grabbed the camera, and the results are shown in the other photos. The one on the left shows the sand dome being lifted up onto the boiler with John LaOrange on the running board and Scott Griffith up on top and Cory at the controls of the payloader. At this time, it was realized that the brackets holding the sand dome in place, needed to be put on. Not remembering this is not surprising because I have been at Hoosier Valley since 1991 and the dome has been off of the Kanawha's boiler all of this time! A search found the missing brackets, bolts were unscrewed and in the second photo, Scott is shown putting one of the bottom dome brackets on. Finally in the last photo, Scott is shown on the top of the boiler putting one of the domes side brackets in place while John LaOrange and Matt Lasayko work on other parts and Steve Newland is shown climbing up the steps to help out while Cory and Tom Travis watch from the ground. I had to get back to my lettering at this time to try to finish up, but it's my understanding that the sand dome was successfully put into place. A long time coming, this is great news for the continued cosmetic restoration of the Chesapeake & Ohio 2-8-4.
Have a great week everyone. Supposed to get back to winter temps by the end of this week.
Les
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