Winter makes a comeback at Hoosier Valley 2/25/17

 

Greetings!

Mother Nature toyed with us this past week; giving us a number of WAY above average temps and enabling the 3rd warmest February to be entered into the record books.  But she slapped us down today with temps in the upper 20's and a brisk wind dropping the wind chill down to the teens.  Well....we knew it was going to happen! 

The cold kept museum participation way today, but still, a number of  things still got done. 

An old out of service welder was cut up for the scrap pile.

John LaOrange fired up G.E. # 11 and found it worked very well.  This is after the guys were able to stop the oil leakage.  Good news!

Margrett Cook provided a hot lunch in the NKP kitchen car.

One of the problems we had with Alco S-1 # 310 last season was a stack fire  The first photo shows the removed stack and the results of the fire are obvious.  By the way, the stack is shown upside down.  The second photo shows the hood of the Alco and the results of the fire.  Fortunately, there was no other damage to the old girl.  A new stack is going to be fabricated and the third shot shows Dave Cook (at left) and Cory Bennett preparing to drill some holes in the newly made gasket.

John was busy renewing our inside wood pile for the furnace in the West Annex of the Shop.  I gave him just a little help and the filled wood box is shown in the 4th photo.  Temps in the West Annex were up in the low 50's today.

Last week, John DeGan was shown starting the work of cleaning up the running gear of our Alco built Kanawha, 2-8-4 # 2789.  During her last shopping, The Chesapeake & Ohio used rods off of other 2-8-4's and a couple of those are shown in the next two photos.  Number 2754 supplied one of her side rods for the right side as shown In photo 5 and the left eccentric rod is shown in the sixth shot as coming from sister 2-8-4 number 2745.  Although both the 2745 and 2754 were built by Lima, the interchangeability of parts for the 90 K4 class locomotives is obvious from these two photos.  There are parts from other K4's as we will probably discover in the continuing cosmetic clean up of the "Big Mike".

Finally, in the last shot, Bob Albert is shown doing some work on the memorial plaque that hangs in the museums depot building.  Bob is in charge of the displays in the museum.

Due to the cold, an early quit was the story of the day.  Keep warm folks.  March (and the official start of Spring) is now just days away!

Les  

   

A BEEYOOOOOOTIFUL February day at Hoosier Valley!

 

Greetings!

Who would have believed a 68 degree day in the middle of February? That's what we got today in North Judson!  Other parts of the U.S. have been hit by horrible winter weather.  But not our area of the country.  And we are NOT complaining!!!!! 

With this forecast, it gave me a chance to do some painting on passenger car # 899.  Late last fall, I scrapped loose paint and primed the 20 windows on the south side of the car, but only got the Pullman Green finish coat on half of them before darkness stopped me and cool days thereafter prevented me from finishing the job.  This morning, I found the Lift parked next to the Shop building, but couldn't get it going, which happens after a period of inactivity.  Asked John DeGan if he could give me a hand and he eventually sprayed some starter fluid in the carburetor while I turned the key and it then fired right up!   Rolled it over to number 899 and spent the morning doing the deed!  Photo one shows the end result.  Yes, the roof needs repainting; a job for this spring.

On the way rolling the Lift back to the Shop, I noticed that three of the seats that Bud Tibbie and I had been taken off of the end platforms of Grand Trunk Western transfer caboose # 75072 last fall were still laying next to the car.  I grabbed John DeGan again and asked Mark Knebel if we could throw the seats into the bed of his pickup to take over to the scrap pile.  Mark backed his truck up and John and I loaded them.  Another job done!

Sparky Byers and Rich Warner worked on finding the oil leak on G.E. diesel number 11.  There still seems to be a bit of oil getting into the water system.  

Despite my grabbing John DeGan for various jobs today, John actually had started in on the cleanup of Kanawha # 2789.  The second photo shows John with his wire wheel working on the rods of the 2-8-4.  Already the improvement in looks is discernible.  

Joe Kingsbury has continued working on C&EI tool car # A-1054.  He has painted the floor and the interior end ramps as can be seen in the third shot.

Bob Albert was working again on IC display caboose # 9914 in another attempt to fix the roof leak.

In the morning, Cory Bennett, John LaOrange, Tom Rainford and David Cook moved some rail over toward the area where the track will eventually be built into the West Annex of the Shop.  Eventually, the turntable lead track (which runs to the north of the Shop) will be shoved over and in the afternoon Cory and Bing Risley took mixed dirt and stone over to the area where the track will eventually be moved.  Bing is shown in the fourth photo getting another load of dirt while Cory works to smooth the dirt out with the Payloader in the fifth photo.  Note Corky sitting behind Bing in that 4th photo!

Doug and Loretta Kosloske manned the depot today and the nice weather brought out some visitors.  Thought I would include a photo of the depot to end this report.

Enjoy the great weather!  Hopefully it will last, but don't bet the bank on it!

Les