Mother Nature smiles at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum 6/24/17

 

Greetings!

Record high temps in the southwestern U.S. and storms in the south, but with the official start of Summer this past week, we get a day with temperatures in the low 70's at the museum.  An absolutely beautiful day!  Kudos to Mother Nature for this gift!

Two guest engineers this morning and then two trains to English Lake.  Engineer was Doug Kosloske and John DeGan the conductor, with GE # 11 on the point.

John has recently started painting Kanawha # 2789.  Photo # 1 shows some of the parts that have been painted.  Because of his efforts, I decided that I'd try to letter the 2-8-4's tender and to start that effort, I gave the back end a new coat of black.  Photo's 2, 3 and 4 show the tender as it appeared at the start of the day, then after I had started the work, and finally in shot # 4, the final result.  The paint was too wet of course, to letter the back end so that will have to wait for another day.

Speaking of lettering, the fifth photo shows our 50' TOFC flatcar after Mark Knebel had reapplied its Pennsylvania Railroad lettering and its original number, 475403, earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the Gandy Dancers spent the day spiking the new ties that had been put in on storage track number 2.  Photo 6 shows this work.  That's John LaOrange on the left, holding the tie up tight to the rail, while David Cook (center) taps the tie in with a short sledgehammer while Cory Bennett at right, waits with the air hammer.  And then in the 7th shot, Cory is driving a spike home!

Finally, HVRM is all about education and the last shot shows Bob Jachim giving a talk about the 2789 to a varied group of visitors.  Bob does a great job, and also makes a mean pot of coffee!

A lot of others at  the museum today including Steve Henrichs, Joe Kingsbury (who fixed our International lawn tractor and spent a lot of the day mowing), Bob Barcus and Loretta Kosloske (who manned the depot), Bob Albert, Steve Newland, Bing Risley, Mark Knebel and others I probably missed.

Volunteers are always needed.  Please consider helping out on a Saturday.

Les

 

MINT FEST/TRAIN RIDES ARE OVER TILL NEXT YEAR.....

 

Greetings to all,

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Weather was moderate compared to last week. Be thankful

you are not in the Southwest US, extreme temps for a very large area stretching from California

central valley to AZ, NM, CO, TX, MS an then a tropical storm is battering the Texas coast line. Up to

4 inches of rain. How says global warming does not affect the weather. Well operations continued

on over the weekend at HVRM.

Saturday was a good ridership day with maybe close to 100 people rode the train, mostly folks from

the mint fest. Tom Travis an Bob Barcus manned the depot for Saturday. Margret provided lunch for

the working crew on the train an track workers. Les Beckman manned Grasselli Tower for most of the

day. Bob Jacquim provided services most of the day, coffee maker, opening the depot, putting up the

flag, protecting Mulberry street to any other odd job around the museum. Bjarne Henderson was the

engineer, Mark Knebel was conductor for Saturday. Steven Bulla provided crossing guard protection.

Cory, David, John an some others worked on putting ties in on the storage track. I believe that all the

old ties are now out an putting rail plates under the rail. I may have missed a few.

Engine 11 provided power for the weekend activities. Each day had 2 guest engineers before regular

operations began.

Sunday workers were Loretta Koslovske an Tom Travis for the depot. John DeGan was engineer, Doug

Koslovske was conductor. Les Beckman provided car host duties for both runs. John La Orange an

Cory Bennitt were noted down at the track work site putting ties in under the rail. Bob Albert was in attendance

also. Steve Bulla again provided road crossing protection. First run had a fair amount of riders, second

run was not so many.

Les Beckman provide some pictures for the report. Bjarne was working on the Troop car paint 

to keep it from fading. The troop car really looks good, thanks for all your hard work. 

Hope everyone has a good week, be safe on the road. Les will be putting out the newsletter for the

next couple of weeks while I take a short vacation

Tom Travis

WKVI update - rail line

 

HVRM members on line:

News update from WKVI on the rail line issue.

Mark

Railroad Dispute Costing Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, Town of North Judson - WKVI Information Center

Railroad Dispute Costing Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, Town of North Juds... The legal battle over North Judson's short line railroad has town officials considering the line's future. Last ...

Saturday June 9th, HVRM Doing Tie Replacement on Storage Track

Les,    

          Here are a couple of pictures I took today.  Bjarne washing the troop car . Kevin, John, Dave, Cory,

Mark installing 63 ties and Mark getting  68 more ready to install.

Greeting to all,

Another hot day at HVRM today, but did not keep the tie replacement team

from doing their job. Tom Rainford provided the photos for the report today.

I have sent a couple of other items of interest to the HVRM RESTORATION

Page blog. Just google it, should come up. One picture sent by Mark Knebel

shows the repainted GTW 75072 caboose an the Purdue crane in the background.

Both pieces of equipment have been repainted recently. The PRR flat car has

been pulled around to the #2 track outside the shop. Some shuffling of equipment

Saturday ended up with the 2 cabooses an open air car being sent to the end

of the turntable track lead. Mark did not say what he is going to do with the

PRR flat car, maybe letter it? Oh the GTW caboose was moved back to the

run around track at the west end of the equipment. Joe Kingsbury said that

there is no reason that the newly rebuilt dining car can't be pulled out of the

building. He had a couple of boards to paint, but is ready. I finally looked

over the new power panel Joe Baker installed for power for the kitchen car

an dining car an other outlets for other applications. Maybe Les can get

some pictures next week of it.

I'm getting ahead of myself. At 8am HVRM had a board meeting well attended.

Many items were discussed including the North Judson town meeting the

prior Monday. More awareness is building in the community as to get CKIN

to remove himself from the railroad an get the new operator signed. Also

I passed along some other PDF's HVRM RESTORATION PAGE blog that

have been news lately. La Crosse posted in a local paper that removal of

CKIN is needed. Projects include replacing ties in storage track with 2nd

rollover ties that were received the Monday before. Talk of Grasselli getting

estimates of getting outside replacement of siding an closing off windows

on the lower floor. A couple of windows upstairs need to be replaced, also

window sills. Roof needs replacing an possible replacement eventually also.

Estimates are needed on that issue. Again it is a long term project. The

reefer sheds were talked about, the person donating aluminum siding,

for his name, has said that he has moved some more stuff out of the way

an is getting closer to the metal all the time. Again a project that will be

done when we have time. Small work crews can only do so much. Hard workers

do it as fast as possible. Jim Mennis again supplied morning doughnuts for

early arrivals. Thanks again.

Operations started after the meeting of a couple of guest engineers

prior to the tourist train.  Margret had a good lunch avail to everyone,

BBQ on a bun, hot beans, salad, cottage cheese, veggies, an to top it off

homemade ice cream. All the windows an doors were open with a nice breeze

blowing thru, but will be OH SO BETTER when the newly rebuilt dining car

is out. FYI, the lunch money that Margret has been collecting for years has

been paying for the materials gone into the new car. Give Margret a BIG

THANKS next time you see her. Train riders for the 12:30pm train was 29.

2 pm train was on the verge of being put away, when 4 passengers showed

up at 1:55pm. No problem, the train ran, an the kids were thrilled to ride.

The pictures are self explanatory, but give a good picture of ongoing activites.

The annual fish fry at the Volunteer Fire Dept was held at 4:30pm an it was

mobbed. The trucks had to go out during the dinner for some reason, but returned

quickly. The local fire dept deserves a lot credit for protecting the community against

fire issues in an out of town.

Mint Fest is on next weekend, HVRM will be offering train rides both Saturday

an Sunday. Please come out an help if possible. Train crew was Bjarne Henderson

engineer, Bob Albert Conductor. Bud Tibby conductor/car host. Loretta Koslovske

Bob Barcus depot workers. New member Kevin Bulla is training for conductor

an did road crossing protection for both trains today.

Everyone have a safe week out there. Be careful on the highways, as there

are detours everywhere an the stone trucks are rolling fast an lots of farm

equipment is moving, just like the monster sprayer going north on IN39 at

8:45pm, hard to see only a couple of blinking lights Saturday.

Tom Travis

La Porte, IN

Manlift Repaired, Flat Tire

 

Les, replaced the tire on the manlift.  It had a tear in the side wall.  Bing found a used one at LaCrosse.  Those are P225 70R15 tires.  Kinda hard to find 15" tires, but LaCrosse had a few.

 

Also, GTW done.  Photo attached.

 

Mark

LaCrosse Town Council supports REMOVAL of CKIN

 

HVRM Members On Line,

Attached is an article from the June 1 edition of the Regional News.

The LaCrosse Town Council supports the removal of CKIN as operator of the rail line.

Mark Knebel,Sec.

HVRM

North Judson

HVRM BOD Meeting Sat / Revenue Status

 

Attachments (3):  Loss Revenue Report, INDOT-Town Agreement, Town Public Notice

This email contains a report from HVRM Treasurer Barcus.  I'm including it for those I have an email address.  It might help explain the current situation at HVRM.

I did hand out copies to the town board at the recent Town Council meeting in North Judson this past Monday.  I had questions as to when they were going to file to have the current operator thrown off the rail line.  Their legal public notice to do so ran in area newspapers in late April.  I didn't get a satisfactory answer.  They didn't know about their published public notice or the date it stated (May 10th) the Town was going to make its federal filing at the STB.

Everyone needs to take some proactive steps, or make some noise, lets gets this done and over with assigning a new railroad operator.  Its the public's rail line.  Over 80% of the purchase price was done with federal, state and county monies (Starke, Porter, LaPorte).  HVRM's Transportation Enhancement application, with the Town as sponsor, brought in $1,500,000.00 to help purchase the line for railway excursions.  HVRM started operating Saturday tourist trains on the line in 2006, and has since hauled 48,000 tourist passengers on those trains.

HVRM was the first entity to take a step forward and try and save the rail line, and bring others into the fold to get it done.

The HVRM board of directors has its monthly meeting this Saturday morning at 8amCT in the depot.

Mark Knebel

Secretary

Hot Time at Hoosier Valley 6/3/17

 

Greetings!

Temps nudged just above 90 degrees today in North Judson.  We had a couple of guest engineers and then ran both trains using Alco S1 # 310.  Engineer today was Doug Kosloske with Steve Henrichs as conductor.  A couple of folks collected tickets and acted a car hosts including Bud Tibbie and Tom Rainford.  Probably others I missed.  The first photo shows Joe Kingsbury working on the air conditioning on Long Island passenger car # 2937 prior to the first departure.

Mark Knebel had finished painting GTW transfer caboose # 75072 earlier this week as shown in the second shot.  He says he still must touch up the lettering.

Walked over to the shop and found that Joe is nearing completion on the steps for Hoosier Valley table/meeting car # K-325.  See the 3rd photo.

The track crew continued pulling out old rotten ties on the number 2 storage track.  The new ties are due in sometime next week for this track and then we'll have to start in on the tie replacement.

The eventual plans seem to be to get new siding for Grasselli Tower, but the Board hasn't yet decided exactly which way to go.  In the meantime, the tower is starting to look really shabby.  So I got a can of latex primer and moved the Manlift over and started to try to get a little primer, and eventually some paint, to make the tower look a bit more presentable until a change is made.  The fourth photo shows the tower and the very bad window sill and boards under the second floor windows on the southeast corner of the building.  And the fifth photo shows the results of my work for the day.  A little bit of an improvement at least.  Fortunately, the windows on the second floor of this south side are all good, and we will just have to replace the sills and side boards.

Temps again tomorrow supposed to be near 90, but more normal 70 degree days are forecast for the coming week.  Enjoy the beginnings of meteorological summer everyone!

Les