Greetings railroad aficionado's!
Got a bit warmer than predicted today, making it up into the mid-80's. The museum's Membership/Business meeting was not officially held as a quorum was not present.
Two Guest Engineers in the morning. Bob Albert was conductor all day with Steve Henrichs in the engineers seat of EL Alco # 310. Both passenger runs were made with Tom Travis acting as car host in the Katy open air car and Bob accommodating some riders back in B&LE caboose # 1989. Bob Jachim flagged Mulberry Street today and Doug Kosloske handled flagging duties west from there.
Bob Barcus was in the Gift Shop and Loretta Kosloske handled ticket sales.
During the week, weed spraying was conducted and the cars that had been moved off of Storage Track number 2 a few weeks ago, were moved back so that the track they were on could be sprayed. That meant that GE diesel # 11 had to move the string of cars back. Photo 1 shows engineer John La Orange in Interlake # 11 as he awaited clearance from conductor Mark Knebel back at the end of the string. After the cars had been removed, track work recommenced. The second photo shows Cory Bennett at the controls of the Backhoe as he dumps a load of ballast onto the storage track just past Nickel Plate Road camp car (kitchen car) # X58538. John La Orange, David Cook, Tom Rainford and myself, spread the ballast and I paused for a second to take the 3rd photo showing David (at left) and Tom hard at work. Mark Knebel showed up and decided to get the blue sectional push car out of the way and the fourth shot shows Tom and Mark taking the second section of the car off of the track before moving it over into Mark's pickup.
Meanwhile, Joe Kingsbury has been at work in the Shop doing some needlescaling on the Porter diesel; ND&W # 5332 (see photo 5 for results).
After Margrett Cook's nice lunch in NKP X58538, and after the first English Lake passenger run, Steve and Bob moved the passenger train back out of the way, so that Track 2 in the Shop could be cleared of equipment. First out was the Union Pacific Tamper with Cory at the controls as he took it east onto the Museum main (photo 6), in a picture taken from the cab of # 310.
Then Joe removed the electrical connection to # X58538 (photo 7) while Dave disconnected the propane connection to the cars heater (shot number 8). Then number 11 pulled out the Nickel Plate kitchen car (pix 9) and added it to the string of cars pulled off of the Number 2 Storage Track earlier in the day. This is the first time in a VERY long time, that NKP # 58538 has been moved from her spot at the end of that track! A momentous occasion, to say the least!
Things were humming now! Number 11 now moved down to the Shop and pulled out Porter # 5332 and set it aside as shown in photo # 10. Back into Shop Track 2 and the 11th shot shows the GE pulling out the object of a lot of recent museum work. And here she is in photo number 12; Hoosier Valley's newly restored table/meeting car # K325 as number 11 head east so she can be placed in # 58538's spot at the end of Storage Track # 2. Hot Stuff for sure! The reason that K325 had to be put at the end of that track is that the X58538 only has a door on the west end, and to have access to the two cars, this is the way they have to be set up.
Our final shot for this report shows both active diesels; number 11 shoving the NKP kitchen car back west to couple with the K325 while ALCO # 310 is putting the passenger train away after the second run of the day. Nice to see both diesels running at the same time!
Bing Risley told me today that he spent 7 hours over 2 days, cutting grass this week. A never ending job!
Tom Travis was nice enough to bring down his grinder today and I actually was able to do some grinding on the window tracks in the cab of Kanawha # 2789. Ross Robinson continues to make progress on the new set of windows for the 2-8-4.
Have a wonderful week everyone!
Les
No comments:
Post a Comment