Greeting to all,
It was a wonderful day at North Judson with temps in the 70's an clear sky. I showed up sort of late,
but soon got into it. I had heard Loretta had a good crowd already pre-paid for train rides. HVRM had
over 100 riders. Really nice bunch of riders. I was originally asked to do flag protection for road crossing,
but Doug then asked me to be a car host, with Mark Knebel doing the flag duty. I really had a good time
talking to everyone, furthest visitor was from Evansville IN. A couple of military vets on the train also,
as 9/2 was VJ Day. Enjoyed hearing about war experiences, from Army, Air Force an Navy.
Les took some photos of activites around the museum.
Photo 1 & 2. Had the LIRR passenger car jacked up attempting to grease the center pin. Some sort of
pin prevented getting the car off the pin, but was high enough to get grease inside. Passenger cars have
different mechanisms to prevent the truck from coming off in case of an accident, while freight equipment
will lift right off the pin.
Picture 3 has Bob Albert on top of the C&NW boxcar removing the rivets from the catwalks with a torch.
Being so high up an on a slight angle, it is very hard work. Bob got about half of the catwalk off, with
more to torch next weekend. At least enough is off for Mark Knebel to clean up the roof an start painting.
Picture 4 has Tom Rainford an David Cook cut a piece of rail for the new switch. There are switch bolts
square head type, but hex type are required for FRA requirements now. Will have to buy some if we
can't find any around the local area.
Picture 5 has the Purdue crane back over in the shop area, along with the PRR flat car. The C&NW boxcar
is spotted in a different spot so the manlift can be put on flat ground.
Picture 6 is the Porter diesel in the west shop. Joe Kingsbury has been needlegunning the old paint off
in the last couple of weeks. Noisy work, dirty work, an just plain exhausting after a couple of hours with
the clattering of the needlegun. Amazing how much gets painted at the museum in a season.
Train crew was Steve Hendrics engineer, Doug Koslovske conductor, Steven Bulla, student conductor.
I was the car host for both trips. Margret Cook provided a good lunch for the workers. Bob Barcus, Loretta
Koslovske manned the depot duties.
Les Beckman got some paint on the lid to the coal bin near the shanty, along with providing guard duty
at the crossing. Les had some visitors from Crown Point who he gave a good tour of Grasselli tower
to them.
Jason Jordan dropped by for a visit, has not been around in sometime. John LaOrange of course was busy
at every aspect of the museum. Cory Bennitt got the LIRR coach center pin greased. Now I'm not sure
if both ends were done on Saturday. Jon Oram? was in the Troop Sleeper cleaning up the model of
North Judson train display. I had a lot of good comments about the Troop car display. Lots of visitors walked
around the museum grounds during the day also.
I did see John an possibly David putting old depot decking planks inside the reefer cars along Arlington St.
Cleared out the pile of planks that had been stacked inside of the west shop on a temporary basis. Screws
an nails were removed as they were stacked. So someday they may come to good use on some project.
Seems we reuse all material somewhere, someday.
Still a beautiful day on Sunday, with temps hitting about 79 for a while, but will go down to the 50--60's
tonight. Everyone have a good week, be careful on the roads, lots of travelers moving about.
Tom Travis
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