Greetings!
After a hard rain in places on Friday and early this morning, the day in North Judson dawned cloudy with nice temps. Unfortunately, the sun came out in the afternoon and the humidity went back up. A little relief from the heat though, was welcome.
Board of Directors meeting this morning and secretary Mark Knebel arrived late. That's because he and Jason Ciastko were out at milepost 215 (see photo 1), trying to remove the steel post that the C&O had put in years ago to replace the old concrete mileposts. The numbers on those posts had rusted out and m.p. 215 is one of the posts that Mark recently repainted and numbered. You can see the old steel post in photo 2, hiding behind concrete m.p. 215, a photo I took last week. Jason later told me that they were unsuccessful in pulling the post out, but thinks that there is a way to do it. A project for another day!
It was stated at the Board meeting that the agreement between the new freight operator (Lake State Railroad) and the Town still has to be finalized, so until that happens, Hoosier Valley will not be running trains to La Crosse.
Last week I worked on the four number boards on Whitcomb diesel # 509. I managed to get three of them done, but when I tried to finish the last one, the sun had made the board too hot to touch, so I gave up on it until a cooler day. That day arrived this morning and I was able to paint the number on the board, which is the new aluminum board that Tom Rainford had made for the unit when the original fourth board could never be found. Anyway, here's a photo (number 3) of one side of the unit with the number boards now all in place.
I flagged the Mulberry Street crossing a couple of times today, then went over and gave Tom Henrichs a hand in his painting and installation of the trim around the chimney board in Grasselli Tower. We borrowed Joe Kingsbury's jig saw for this work after Tom forgot his at home. The fourth photo shows Tom hammering some of the trim into place. Looks real good.
In the old Shop building, the switch to turn on the light in the back end of the washroom area of the crew office, was located behind the door. If you knew it was there, you could locate it in the dark, but for those who did not know where it was, it was a pain to find, if it even COULD be found. Joe Baker took care of that today and installed a new switch which is right as you enter. Exactly where you would expect to find it! Thanks for taking care of that Joe; one other inconvenience we won't have to put up with any longer!
Sparky Byers and Richard Warner, with an assist from Tom Rainford, worked on putting the new parts back in Interlake G.E. number 11. I managed to get this shot (number 5) from number 11's cab window of Sparky (with his back to the camera) and Rich, hard at work up on the hood of the unit. By this time, the sun had come out and it was HOT up there! They got everything put back in and Tom reported that there were no water leaks. Great news!
Margrett Cook provided lunch for the crew today. Loretta Kosloske was ticket agent and Bob Barcus manned the gift shop in the depot.
Bing Risley was out cutting grass today.
Joe Kinsbury was working on C&EI tool car # A1054.
After reporting last week that the next section of track on the north side of the West Annex of the Shop had been ballasted and leveled, Cory Bennett, Dave Cook and John LaOrange put sand it the area around the track (see photo 6) in preparation for the concrete pour which is scheduled to be done sometime this coming week.
Photo 7 shows the arrival back in North Judson of the second passenger run of the day with Kevin Kennedy flagging Mulberry after he had flagged the "country" road crossings on the westbound run. That's fireman John DeGan in the cab of Alco 310 while over in the engineers seat, was Doug Kosloske. Bob Albert was conductor for both regularly scheduled runs.
You may recall from last weeks report, that we showed Bjarne Henderson as he scraped the loose paint off of the wood windows of the Pullman Troop Sleeper. Bjarne came back today and applied a new coat of Pullman Green paint and yes, occasionally a quick wipe to take some paint off of where it shouldn't have gone!
Have a great week. As Tom Travis reported last week, schools are starting to go back into session with starting times staggered these days. The point is that kids are out there walking, riding bikes and school buses are very evident, so drive carefully!
Have a good week everyone!
Les
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