Howdy!

My granddaughter Rowan was playing her last soccer game of the season, so the wife and I decided to go to Olympia Fields, Illinois to watch the action.  Thus, got an extremely late start for the museum, not getting there until well after lunch.  

One train was run; a late afternoon "Halloween Special" with departure at 4:00 p.m.  More on that in a few moments.

Bud Tibbie advised me that there had been some vandalism on EL Alco # 310.  Not serious, because it was found in time and the S-1 was used to pull N&W gondola # 45622 loaded with some stone out in the area of the Kankakee River bridge where it was shovelled out for use as ballast.  Not quite sure how this vandalism occurred as the Alco seems to have spent a lot of time in the Shop building recently.  Perhaps a visitor got into the unit when no museum member was around.  We need to improve our vigilance.

Since I knew I would be arriving late, my schedule for the day concentrated on just a few items of minor consequence.  Someone asked me the lens diameter of the old headlight we recently received from the Lake Shore Model Railroad Association, and I managed to get that measured (between 22 and 23 inches).  I also looked over the bell that that group had given us and found the number 76 stamped in two different places on the yoke (see photo 1).   This matches the number 76 that had previously been stamped into the top of the bell itself.  A couple of people have told me that this appears to be a Baldwin bell.  If that is true, then the idea that the bell might have been on an Illinois Central steamer numbered 76, might be suspect.  One of the folks told me that, if this IS in reality, a Baldwin bell, the ORIGINAL locomotive number the bell was assigned to by Baldwin appears on the bell shaft.  I measured the nuts holding this bell in place and the nut size is 1 and a half inches.  We have an nice wrench of that size in the museum collection, but I'm going to need help one day, to remove those nuts to look for that number.  Another project for the future!

I also managed to get a photograph of the diesel locomotive headlight that Art Chesna recently donated to the museum (see photo 2).  This headlight was on the second diesel locomotive delivered to the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railroad (better known at the Monon Railroad) back in 1942 from Electromotive (serial number 1598); a NW-2 model.  The Monon  eventually renumbered DS1 as their #11 and in 1969, sold the unit to Industrial Maintenance Service (IMS) who rebuilt it and sold it to the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern (EJ&E) as their number 447.  The headlight still carries this number in the number board!  The EJ&E sold the unit to BMAL, a broker, who sold it to Union Tank Car (UTC) where it was numbered 12347.  The unit was finally scrapped in 2015, a worn out warrior, but Art Chesna of UTC, managed to save one of the headlight off the unit.  His preservation work is outstanding, as you can see in the picture.

Bob Albert told me that he had put up some examples of train order hoops in Illinois Central display caboose # 9914 and when I went in there to look at those, I saw the nice job that Bob had done adding photos of the display of the crossing gate control box that was in the elevated watchman's shanty at 119th and Halsted Streets in Chicago.  That display is shown in the third photo. 

Finally, some of us were approached by conductor Bob Barcus to see if we could act as car hosts for the 4:00 train as we seemed to be short a few folks.  I agreed to help out in Long Island commuter car # 2937.  But then, shortly before departure, I was told that they had enough car hosts but I could ride if I wanted to.  I decided instead to flag the Mulberry Street crossing on both the museum track and the old Chesapeake & Ohio track that the Halloween Special would be riding over.  Also flagged for the 310 as it made its way back to the Shop.

John DeGan was engineer for the special run which used GE # 11, while Steve Henrichs was engineer and Doug Kosloske was conductor for the day with Alco 310.

Lots of other folks helping out including Loretta Kosloske, Jason Ciastko, Cory Bennett, Joe and Louise Kingsury, Tom Rainford, Randall Downs, Mike Healy, Rich Warner, Bob Albert, and some others I'm sure I missed because of my late arrival at the museum.  My apologies to those folks.

Have a great week everyone!

Les