Greetings!
Nice sunny day at HVRM today with temps just over 70 degrees. Good day to ride the train!
I had plans to work on the cab windows for C&O Kanawha # 2789 today, but those plans quickly got squashed! Small museums mean members have to "go with the flow" and some circumstances today necessitated putting the window job on hold. Uncle Sam (the U.S. Postal Service) called Mark Knebel and told him he had to report for duty! Doug and Loretta Kosloske were relaxing for the day. Joe Kingsbury had to leave early. I was thus pressed into train duty; no one else available.
Day had started out with David Cook, Cory Bennett, Bob Jachim and John La Orange doing road patch duty on the museum rail crossing of State Route 10/39. Good word is that the job was done and done safely!
Joe Baker and Brian Elkins were doing electrical work in NKP camp car # X58538.
The new train platform that I mentioned being finished last week, is shown in the first photo, after the orange safety stripes were painted on. Note GE number 11 moving off into the distance with the first of two guest engineers (this one from Ohio!) at the throttle. Not quite the end of the story on the train platform however! Turned out that one of the new planks developed a bad chink and, in the interest of safety, had to be immediately replaced. A new piece was measured and cut. The second photo shows Cory in the process of removing screws (and handing them to John standing next to him) from the bad plank and then after it was removed and the new one slipped in, he is shown putting in the new screws in the third shot.
Mark spent some time this week, working again on Chicago and North Western box car # 284, and the 4th photo shows his progress thus far.
Before Joe had to leave for the day, he is shown needle scaling Porter # 5332 in the fifth shot.
Before I had to start my trainman duties, I was able to check out one of the new window frames that Joe had trimmed last week, and it appears that it is a good fit.
The train crew today consisted of Bjarne Henderson at the throttle with Bob Barcus performing Conductor duties and with Stephen Bulla getting in additional time as a Student Conductor. Bud Tibbie was the car host on Katy open air car # 13833 while I handled the duties in LIRR coach # 2937. Bob Jachim handled the Mulberry Street flagman duties for the 12:30 train while Tom Rainford took care of the 2:00 train, while also handling country road crossings for both trains. In the absence of Loretta, and with Bob Barcus doing conductor duties, Tom Travis handled both ticket and gift shop sales in the depot and the 6th photo shows Tom taking care of one of the sales.
With the shortage of personnel today, the difficulties weren't quite over! The 12:30 train went off without a hitch and with a nice crowd in both the open air car and the coach. But, not so the 2:00 train. Just past the Toto Road crossing, GE # 11 broke down. After a number of attempts to get it going, Cory drove out in his truck but also had no luck. A fuel pump problem. The crew had informed Tom back in the depot immediately after the unit stopped and John La Orange was alerted and got Alco # 310 fired up. Eventually, the 310 arrived, coupled on, and pushed the train over the Kankakee River bridge and to Milepost 218 before returning back to North Judson. Riders seemed to take the delay in stride.
The 7th shot shows the 310 shoving the train (and a dead # 11) into the caboose track after our return and passenger unloading at the depot. Stephen is shown in the next photo in the process of getting ready to uncouple the two units from the train.
Finally, although I was able to get up to Grasselli Tower and talk to some of our visitors during the day, because of train duties, I was not there for everyone who stopped in. The 9th shot shows a sign posted in the tower. The reason for that sign is shown in the last photo. Certain of the levers do not have spring handles on them. When those are pulled forward, there is no way to throw them back into their original position. As you can see, a visitor, or visitors, has pulled four levers forward. It was too late in the day to go down to Grasselli's first floor and search for those particular levers and fix the problem. A job for another day!
Enjoy your Sunday, which is also supposed to be seasonably cool. But the heat is returning next week! Hang in there!
Les
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