Hi folks!
Bright sun but cold temps and bitter wind at Hoosier Valley today. Temps in 20's and low 30's all day and the wind made it feel much colder. All three Santa trains sold out with a lot of kiddies meeting Mr. Claus and telling him of their Christmas wishes.
John LaOrange was engineer on EL Alco # 310 today with Doug Kosloske as conductor. Greeting riders in their authentic railroad uniforms were Joe Kingsbury and Bud Tibbie (see first photo; that's Joe on the right).
Bob Jachim and I shared flagman duties at the Mulberry Street crossing today, with Steve Henrichs the flagman out at the other road crossings up to English Lake.
In last weeks report, I included a couple of photos of the efforts being done to put the sand dome back on Kanawha # 2789 but wasn't around to see the final result. Since John DeGan had GE diesel #11 fired up and idling today as it served as the back up unit for number 310, I asked John if he would pull the 2-8-4 out of the Shop for some photos. John, with Steve acting as conductor, pulled the locomotive out and I got a photo (see number 2 below).
Managed to make it into the Shop and found the boys hard at work on C&EI tool car #A-1054. In the third photo, Dave Cook is shown cutting a new piece of steel to replace a rusted out section. The next photo shows Tom Rainford trying out a new window for the A-1054 to see how it fits (that's Rich Warner behind Tom). And then we see Rich in the next photo, welding the window frame itself into place. The next shot shows Cory Bennett cutting off a piece of rusted out steel on the end of the car. And then we have Tom trying to straighten out a different window frame on the car. Tom looked in the Shop for a heavy C clamp, and actually found the one in the photo. There has been a lot of the new floor put into this car too, and this work should probably move ahead more quickly now that the last passenger trains have run this season.
Finally, the radiator on GE #11 has been leaking badly and the decision to pull it and send it out for a rebuild has been made. As the last Santa train was on its way back to North Judson, John DeGan was preparing to drain the water from the unit. The last photo shows him dragging some of the excess water hose back into the East Annex of the Shop. There are days that will seem to drag this winter. One way to overcome that feeling is to come out on a Saturday and spend a few hours helping out at HVRM. Skill is not necessary. We WILL find something for you to do! Give it your consideration.
And now, as we enter Christmas week, I want to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas. Have a great one!
Les
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