Working on the railroad (museum) 8/26/17!

 

Greetings!

Marvelous day at Hoosier Valley today with temps in the 70's.  Can this be August?

Kevin Kennedy and Mark Knebel took the museum motorcar and a 4 wheel flat out to the west side of the Kankakee River bridge and dumped 57 pails of stone ballast onto a low spot.

We had a guest engineer this morning hosted by the train crew of Doug Kosloske (engineer), Steve Henrichs (conductor) and Stephen Bulla (student conductor).  The first photo shows EL Alco # 310 moving west past the Penn Central boxcar that Mark painted and lettered.  A bygone era briefly recreated!

Bob Jachim was Mulberry Street flagman in the morning, I handled it for a while later and Kevin then finished that job.   Tom Rainford provided flagman protection at the other grade crossings all day.

Bob Albert was car host for the two passenger runs.  Tom Travis was station agent handling ticket sales while Bob Barcus took care of the depot gift shop.  Margrett Cook provided lunch.  

Joe Kingsbury spent most of his day, needle scaling ND&W Porter # 5332, as can be seen in the second shot.  A messy, and very noisy, job!  Ear protection a must!

There was work being done today on the track on the west side of the Shop and the third photo shows John LaOrange in the Payloader, moving various items around while David Cook works at removing a stubborn spike from a tie.  After Dave finished and took a break, I pulled a few spikes out of ties after which I retired from any further trackwork for the day!  The work continued on that track during the day and by the afternoon, a frog had been put in and a section of rail attached (photo #4) headed back toward the entrance into the west side of the Shop.

I spent most of my day hosting visitors up in Grasselli Tower while also trying to replace the rotten lid on the coal bin next to the Mulberry Street Road Crossing Shanty.  The fifth photo show the coal bin with the lid removed while Tom Travis was nice enough to take a photo of myself with  the rebuilt lid at the end of the day (photo 6).

Finally, with PC boxcar #153177 now finished, Mark has decided to move on to a new project; Chicago and North Western "Billboard" boxcar # 284.  The last shot shows the train crew shoving C&NW # 284 back toward the Shop with Long Island passenger coach # 2937 between the boxcar and the 310.

Ended up the day with the battery dead on my van.  Kudos to Bob Barcus for coming to my rescue with a brand new set of jumper cables!  

Have a great week everyone.  Labor Day weekend coming next week.

Les        

Fix and pix at Hoosier Valley 8/19/17

 

Greetings!

Warm, sunny day in North Judson today.  Temp got up to at least 87 degrees!  Still, we had nice passenger turnouts for both runs to English Lake!

Started out today taking a shot (photo #1) of 250W where the old Erie Railroad (now museum track) crossed, just to the south of Indiana State Routes 10/39.  Our rail ends just a bit to the east (right in the photos) after crossing 250W.  Note the Erie North Judson bike trail.  The area just to the left in the photo, is where the museum Easter Egg and Pumpkin trains end up and Cory Bennett was cutting grass over there this morning.

You may recall that Tom Rainford and I (well, mostly Tom) recently put the missing stove pipe pipe in the Mulberry Street watchman's shanty.  The old pot bellied stove, still had parts missing and when I mentioned that to Bob Albert, he said he thought he knew where they might be.  He found them, and put them in the shanty where I found them this morning.  Decided to try to get these parts put on the stove.  Here's a photo (number 2) with the end of the stove pipe attached.  The "blotches" are where I washed the dirt off the top.  I quickly realized that, to get the broken rear top piece back on, I had to disconnect the entire stove pipe, which I did!   The broken section, and the cook lid, are shown in place in the 3rd shot, but unpainted.  I painted the various parts, put the stove pipe back on, then put the painted parts on and the results are shown in the 4th photo. 

Meanwhile, Bob Barcus was selling tickets in the depot today while Tami and Carmen handled gift shop and other depot duties.

Steve Henrichs was the engineer today while Bob Albert handled conductor duties.  Steve came up to Grasselli today before the first run (that's him with John LaOrange taking a photo in the 5th shot) and Steve suggested that we consider putting the old roll top desk up in Grasselli in place of the table that is currently in there.  Later I measured the desk and found it would fit!

Meanwhile, Mark Knebel, with help from Jason Ciatsko, was working on putting the template for the PC herald on the Penn Central box car (photos 6 and 7).  Mark had handled flagging duties on the first passenger train of the day, while Jason handled the second train.  Later in the afternoon, Mark was marking the outline of the herald on the car, preparatory to painting.

Joe Kingsbury and Rich Warner were working on the Porter diesel back in the West Annex of the Shop.

At the end of the day, I grabbed a ride in EL Alco # 310 with Steve and the 9th photo shows him as he pushed the passenger carrying equipment into the caboose track.

Finally, while riding with Steve in number 310, I noted how good the Erie searchlight signal still looked after Mark painted it last year.  Thought I would grab a shot to end the photo string.

Enjoy your upcoming week.  Use care with the Solar Eclipse coming up this Monday.  Do NOT look directly at the sun as it may cause permanent eye damage!  Use the correct glasses, or do as I am going to do, don't look at all! 

Les    

 

HVRM 8-12-2017 Lots Of Work Completed Around Museum

Greetings to all

Saturday was the first meeting in the new dining car, K-325, for the monthly board of directors meeting.

Les Beckman brought up the subject of acquiring an older style fridge for Grasselli tower. It will be stored

down on the first level until room is made for the moving it upstairs. The member who donated the

aluminum sheet siding for the reefer building was brought to the museum grounds last week.

So maybe the building can be buttoned up before winter an anymore damage is done to the exterior.

A short monthly meeting.

After the board meeting, work immediately commenced on a couple of different items. Last week

it was discovered that a battery terminal on the EL 310 burnt off. So the only recourse was to get

a replacement. Doug Kosloske ordered another battery an was delivered last Wednesday. It was

put on a flat cat on a pallet, so the payloader was brought out to move the battery over to the

ailing 310, which was pulled outside the shop. Battery was installed an cables replaced, after

cleaning them up, the 310 started first time.  The EL 310 was to take over for the ailing GE #11,

which has another water leak somewhere in the system.

The trailer was pulled out of the shop with a load of new boards from replacement of the station

platform. During the week, a crew pulled up old wood  in front of both depot doors. Wood was replaced

in front of the west door, but the crew ran out of time an the east door was without decking outside

the door. The trailer was backed in to a space next to the depot on the east end. Setup commenced

of the miter saw. Deck workers consisted of Joe, John, Tom Rainford, Cory, Tom Travis, Kevin, Bud,

David, an a couple more. The replacement was completed in short order. A few boards needed a few

more cuts, but all went well. The trailer was pulled back over the west shop areas. Later in the

day, John an Tom T pounded an pulled out the old deck boards deck screws an stacked neatly.

The boards are not much good, as removal of screw broke off, an had to be forced up, resulting

in splintering boards.

Les Beckman was working over in Grasselli tower till about 2pm. Mark Knebel worked on the man

lift by the shop painting lettering on PENN CENTRAL box car. Train crew were, Bjarne Henderson,

engineer, Steve Hendricks conductor. Margret made lunch of pizza, watermelon, cantaloupe,

an cole slaw.  Depot workers, Bob Barcus, Lorretta Kosloske. Bob Jacim was also in attendance.

Kevin provided road crossing protection for both train runs.

A good first run, but the 2nd run was a little light. Not bad for middle of August an back to

school for lots of kids. The following is a explantion of the pics provide by Les Beckman.

 

Tom -

1.  Tom Rainford removing platform board with gap.

2.  Cory Bennett & Tom Travis cutting to size. 

3.  Dave Cook & Joe Kingsbury screwing new platform boards into place.

4.  New battery (yellow) in Alco # 310.

5.  Doug Kosloske replaces battery door on 310.

6.  Mark Knebel works on PC # 153177.

7.  310 gets set to replace GE # 11 on train.  

The west shop had the Porter started an moved to the west end to make room for the

track alignment machine. Doug wanted room to be able to put the EL 310 over the

the pit for some work underneath.

Hope everyone has a good week, watch for kids boarding an exiting from school busses.

I've already had one vehicle run my stop arm on the second day of school in La Porte.

Tom Travis, La Porte IN  

Rolling along at Hoosier Valley 8/5/17

 

Greetings!

It was beautiful today at North Judson after a cool, upper 60 degree day yesterday!  Temps got up to the low 80's with low humidity and sunshine most of the day.  Hard to beat such a day in early August!

No guest engineers this morning so we got off to a bit later start.  Both trains ran with Doug Kosloske as Conductor and John DeGan as Engineer.  Tom Rainford was car host and Bud Tibbie handled flagman duties at the crossings outside of town.  I flagged Mulberry Street for both the 12:30 and 2:00 runs and Tom managed to snap a shot of me (photo 1) on one of the runs.

Speaking of Mulberry Street, Tom and I had started the day talking about the missing stove pipe in the crossing watchman's shanty there and Tom said we could probably pick up some stove pipe at the hardware store.  So, over to Hoppe Hardware we went and Wendy Hoppe went into the back and found what we were looking for.   The second photo shows Tom figuring out the puzzle using the new stove pipe along with the old stuff.  We had to move the old cast iron stove a little bit, but finally got everything to fit!  Then Tom says, we need to take it back apart and paint it!   Really?  YES!  So, we did it and the third and fourth photos show Tom prying the various pieces.  I took a break to go over to Grasselli and talk to some visitors about the tower, and by the time I got back, the paint had dried and Tom had pieced everything back together!  Thanks Tom!

Tom Travis handled ticket sales in the depot today while Loretta Kosloske worked in the stations gift shop.  Margett Cook made lunch for the members.

Joe Kingsbury was cutting grass today and later joined by Bing Risley.

Mark Knebel had recently finished painting the PC box car and lettered one end of the car, as seen in the 5th photo.

I spent the afternoon getting the Lift over to the side of the Kanawha and painted first one side of the cab, and then ran the Lift around over to the other side of the 2-8-4 and painted that cab side.  The 6th shot shows the results of this effort. 

While I was up on the Lift, Dave Cook was working on the batteries on EL Alco # 310 and eventually Cory Bennett brought the Payloader over and he and John tried to help David out, as can be seen in the 7th photo.  That they were eventually successful can be seen by the battery sitting in the bucket of the Payloader in the eighth photo.

The new planks for the North Judson station platform arrived and the last photo shows them sitting on the trailer.  Another project in the works!

So although we got a late start today, the projects continued going forward.

Have a great week!

Les