Greetings -
Had a very short day at the museum back on June 9th, due to having a tooth pulled earlier that week. There was a Board of Directors meeting that morning and I only stuck around for a little while before heading for home.
This past weekend (June 16th and 17th) coincided with the annual North Judson Mint Festival and the museum was open, with two train rides on both days. Got the "good news" upon arriving on Saturday morning, that someone had thrown a rock through one of the windows of passenger coach 899. Both the 16th and 17th saw temps in the 90's with high humidity and working in an extremely hot 899 wasn't fun. Got the broken glass cleaned up and fortunately had an extra window frame (with glass) on hand and managed to get the window replaced (see photo one).
Mark Knebel had the doors on the automobile end of NKP baggage car # 344 open, as can be seen in the second photo, as he had to get in and put primer on that end. A photo taken on the 17th (3rd shot), shows his work on the car to this point. BTW, that's member Bing Risley and Corky next to the car. Mark was also able to clean the crud off of the trucks on the north side of the 344 and get those painted, as can be seen in the 4th photo. The plan was to get the 344 pulled slightly forward so that Mark could get the man lift up against the other end of the car, so that he could put primer on that end this upcoming week.
As I said a bit earlier, there were train rides on both the 16th and 17th. I arrived at the museum on Sunday just as Alco # 310 was pushing the 12:30 p.m. train west out onto the ex-C&O line. A short time later came a call from the cab of 310; the Alco had lost power! Fortunately, the brake work had just been finished on G.E. number 11 and Doug Kosloske and John LaOrange fired her up and took off on a rescue mission, eventually bringing the train back to North Judson. After unloading passengers at the depot, the dead 310 has uncoupled from the train and set on the caboose track and the 11 was coupled up to the train in time to make the regular 2:00 p.m. departure. John found out the problem with the 310 was a bad fuse, and the Alco was soon operational again. Little items can sometimes result in big problems!
Train crews for the trips were Steve Henrichs (engineer) and Bob Albert (conductor) on the 16th and Bjarne Henderson (engineer) and Steve Henrichs (conductor) on the 17th. Car hosts for these days included Joe Kingsbury, Bob Gyurko, Bud Tibbie, Tom Rainford, myself and others also helping out on the trains and also with flagging duties. Hot temps divided ridership amongst the MKT #13833 (open car) and LIRR #2937 (air conditioned coach) on a pretty even basis.
Bob Barcus and Loretta Kosloske were in the depot and Charlene Gyurko provided a hot lunch both days and also assisted in the depot on the 17th.
On the 16th, a crew started in on the extension of track into the west entrance of the West Annex of the Shop building. Using the backhoe and shovels, their results are shown in the final two photos. Ballast forthcoming!
This unusually hot spell is supposed to break this week with normal high temps (around 81 degrees) in the extended forecast. Let's hope it is so!
Have a great week everyone!
Les
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