Heavy work and some light at Hoosier Valley on 1/30/16

Greetings -

El Nino gave us another unseasonably warm day at HVRM today.  Temps into the upper 40's and even peeks at the sun at times.  This gave the museum an opportunity to do some work on the equipment including greasing the center plates on some of the cars.

The first photo shows John LaOrange and Tom Rainford getting the air jack set up to lift the end of Erie Lackawanna caboose # C345.  Note the museums air compressor in the background.  After the car is lifted slightly to expose the center plate, blocking is set in place to make sure that the car remains elevated in place.

The second photo shows John under NKP flat car #1946, setting the graphite disk into the center plate depression while Mark Knebel is shown in the 3rd photo checking the car body for soundness.  This visual inspection includes checking for any cracks that might have occurred.  Nickel Plate Road # 1946 is one of the flat cars that has been converted by the museum into an open air car for use in passenger service.

There has been some seepage into the interior of one end of display caboose IC # 9914 and Bob Albert made some gutters to move water sliding down from the roof away from the windows on that end of the car.  The fourth and fifth shots show Bob applying one of those gutters onto the car side.  Hopefully this will solve the problem.  Meanwhile on the interior of the car, Joe Baker shows one of the new 4' long LED lights that replaces one of the old fluorescent tubes.  Joe has put two of these in the caboose already, and will install more.

The radiator on the museums 95 ton General Electric diesel was recently removed and delivered to a company in Valparaiso, Indiana for rebuilding.  The company advised that the work was done and Cory Bennett and Rich Warner drove up to Valpo to pick it up, returning to the museum right at lunchtime.  The next four photos show the afternoon work beginning with the boom removing the radiator from Rich's pickup truck, then Fred Boyer (at left) and Tom Travis putting bolts in the framework, then Cory Bennet operating the payloader/boom lifting the radiator up while in the last photo, John LaOrange guides it into place in the compartment at the front of the unit.  At this point, I had to leave for the day although the actual rebolting of the radiator into its place was not to be done until next Saturday.

Supposed to get cold next week.  Enjoy the mild temps while you can!

Les