Greetings -
First day of July and temps in mid-80's at HVRM today with mostly sunny skies.
Two guest engineers in morning and both English Lake trains were operated. Doug Kosloske engineer, Steve Henrichs conductor, Joe Kingsbury car host and Bud Tibbie road flagman. Bob Jachim handled the Mulberry Street crossing protection.
Despite the Holiday weekend, spikes were put in additional ties on Storage Track number 2. Crew included Cory Bennett, John La Orange, Tom Rainford, Mark Knebel and Kevin Kennedy. There may have been others I missed.
Bob Barcus and Loretta Kosloske handled depot duties.
Jon Oram was down at the museum during the week and also today, doing work on the North Judson N gauge 1952-era layout. Ballast was applied to certain areas, new (old) cars put on the layout, the electrical troubleshooting saw one of the Erie semaphore signals being lit and new signs of explanation were made. Jon does 99.9% of this work himself and visitors appreciate being given a good idea of the way North Judson looked back then! The first photo shows Jon putting the screws back in one of the protective covers that protects the layout. A couple of the newly made signs are visible at the edge of the layout.
I got the Manlift out and drove it over to the west side of Grasselli Tower to do some additional work in scraping peeling paint and applying a new coat of primer.
Not much else going on....and then there was! I heard the Purdue crane being backed out from in front of the Shop and out onto museum trackage and pushed across Mulberry Street. I managed to take a shot (photo 2) from the Manlift after the crane had made its way across the street before stopping. The photo shows Mark Kneblel at the controls with Tom Rainford acting as Conductor back on Grand Trunk Western caboose #75072. John La Orange flagged Mulberry, but the edge of the Tower blocks him from appearing in this photo. What's going on?
The crane and its two cars moved west to the switch behind the Shop and photo 3 shows the ensemble now heading east on the old Chesapeake & Ohio line.
Photo 4 shows John La Orange flagging the second Mulberry Street crossing (although the flashers WERE working) and the fifth photo shows the train heading across the street. Incidentally, that's Bing Risley and Corky in Bing's John Deere in photo number 5. Eventually the train continued all the way past Main Street past the east end of the musum. Not sure what was going on there and I got back to work on Grasselli. Eventually, the Purdue crane came back, pulling Pennsylvania flat # 475403 and the GTW caboose and they stopped directly opposite the Tower. It finally dawned on me and I dropped the Manlift down and went over to give Mark, John and Tom a hand. But first a short explanation.
Back in 1991 (yes, 16 years ago!), CSX was going to tear down three old Maintenance sheds that sat at the location where the three car train was now stopped. The museum asked CSX if we could have them and they donated the 3 structures to the museum, with the proviso that the area should be completely cleaned up after the sheds were moved. We moved the three and they are now the Secretary's Office and Artifacts Shed; the Payloader storage shed and the Handcar shed. At that time, there were also 6 or 7 sections of heavy rail next to those buildings, cut in various lengths. Since we were told to "clean up the area" after the sheds were removed (which we did), we assumed that that included the rail, so we brought it too over to the museum property. UNTIL, we got a call from CSX saying, "Where is our rail?" We had to put it back. It stayed in a stack, covered in weeds since that date. CSX obviously forgot about it and is long gone now itself. And THAT is what was obviously what we were now going to claim.....AGAIN! Sixteen years isn't too long to wait, is it?
Photo 6 shows Mark dropping the hook toward Tom an John on the ground. Can't see any rail? Believe me, it's there! We measured the length of a couple of sections, and then marked the center point. Photo 7 shows the first piece after it was clamped on and lifted from the pile. At this point, I stopped shooting photos and climbed up onto the Pennsy flat, and then Tom joined me. We positioned the rail sections onto a couple of pieces of wood with enough space in between so that the unloading will be easier.
By this time, the last train of the day had arrived, GE number 11 had done all the switching and it was time to call it a day, and pack everything up. That took a little while!
One last thing I did was take a photo of Pullman Troop Sleeper # 7256, which is shown in the last shot. Bjarne Henderson had given the car a new wash of linseed oil a couple of Saturdays ago, and I had neglected to look at the results last week. The sides are still a bit "tacky", but the car looks fine as you can see.
Have a great week everyone. Enjoy the Fourth. BE SAFE! And don't forget to fly the flag!
:es
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