HVRM's Santa Claus Trains, Final Trains for the 2019 Season

Greetings to all the ELF's an ELF'ettes who help participated for the last three weekends,

of three trips a day, capacity ridership in the Long Island coach. Many small kids with anticipation,

with a big smile, to meet the BIG GUY, SANTA CLAUS.

Weather for all three weekends turned out great. Train crews had all of the equipment running

in top notch condition. The lunch room car ladies had excellent  meals every Saturday. If you were not

down  to eat today, you missed an excellent year end banquet.  Carved ham, augratin potatoes, 

green beans, corn, assorted cookies, many great desserts added to the enjoyment of all.

The star of the entire show for three Saturdays was Bob Barcus, who thrilled every child with a

gift from Santa, some comforting chatter. It was a big challenge for Bob to take on the role of

Santa Claus from his regular duty handling tickets, handling the books, getting merchandise 

ordered, keeping shelves full of railroad merchandise. 

So the next time you see Bob around HVRM, give the BIG GUY (SANTA) a handshake an a hearty

Thank You.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Regards

Tom Travis   

Hoosier Valley 10/19/19

Greetings -

Short museum report.  Nice weather today with sun and temps in the upper 60's.  Three Pumpkin trains, all well filled.  Had to use second open gondola car (NKP # 1946) for overflow capacity.  Some problems with GE 95-ton diesel (overheating) caused later arrival back at depot for the 10:00 run.   Alco S1 # 310 handled second two trains.  Excellent crop of pumpkins this year; folks all well satisfied.

Mark Knebel has continued his painting efforts on Erie Lackawanna commuter coach # 3328.

Enjoy the upcoming week!


 Les

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Wind and sun at Hoosier Valley 10/12/19

Greetings _

After a nasty Friday when a cold front moved through the area knocking temps down and bringing rain, Saturday dawned cold but sunny!  The wicked wind didn't keep visitors away from the museum and all three Pumpkin Trains were well attended.  Engineer Doug Kosloske was at the throttle of GE number 11 while Bob Barcus handled conductor duties.  There was a slight glitch in tickets before the first train, but Loretta Kosloske kept ticket things going well in the depot.  Since riding in the open car might have been uncomfortable to certain folks, those with open car tickets were given the option of riding in Erie Lackawanna caboose #C345.  No one took up that option for the 10:00 a.m. train, but 6 riders rode in the bay window car on the 12:30 train and 9 people on the 2:30 train.  Tom Travis and I were ticket collectors on the EL caboose for the day.  Riding in the enclosed caboose is a good option to offer customers.

Since our trains run with the diesel pushing for half of our runs, a road crossing flagman is required.  The photo shows Mark Knebel at the Arlington Street crossing today.  That's conductor Barcus's hand holding his train radio at the left.  John DeGan also did some flagman duties during the day.  Joe Kingsbury and Bob Gyurko were some of those who also helped out on the train.

The Pumpkin trains use up most volunteers for one job or another, but Tom Rainford stated that some work was done on the wood stove over in the West Annex of the Shop building.  Not sure if repairs were successful or not but the stove keeps us warm during cold weather, so will undoubtedly get fixed.

Have a good week everyone and enjoy our Fall weather!


Les

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Nice August day at Hoosier Valley 8/24/19

Greetings!

Mark Knebel continued painting the exterior of Grasselli Tower today.  The first photo is a rather unique view of Mark working on the window trim on the first floor windows.  I spent the day giving some talks to visitors up in Grasselli, and in between visitors, working on scraping loose paint and putting primer on the Mulberry Street watchman's road shanty.  Also flagged Mulberry for the two scheduled trains.

Speaking of scraping, a visitor who was recently at Hoosier Valley talked to Tom Travis about donating some railroad items to the museum.  Tom travelled down to the guys home in Kokomo and brought back some signals and some track jacks.  Also at the guys house was a scraper that was pulled by a horse, and later a tractor.  It was too big for Tom to bring home so Cory Bennett and John LaOrange eventually went down to Kokomo and picked it up (see photo 2).

Cory and John, along with Dave Cook and Tom Rainford, spiked some of the ties that they recently moved to the Route 10 rest stop where the museum has its Easter Egg Hunt and Pumpkin trains.

Joe Baker and Bob Gyurko were checking some electrical stuff in the original part of the Shop building.

Jon Oram was doing some clean up work on the N gauge display layout and also donated some items to the museum, including a neat Pennsylvania Railroad advertisement.

Joe Kingsbury was working on ND&W 5332 in the Shop's West Annex.

Not sure of the ridership count, but both trains did have riders.  Bob Albert was conductor, Kevin Kennedy student conductor, Doug Kosloske engineer, Bob Gyurko car host/P.A, announcer and Shad Vargo handled road flagman duties.

Have a great week everyone!

Les

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Work and rescue at Hoosier Valley 8/17/19

Greetings!

Had a heavy rainstorm with high winds go through North Judson this morning.  Arrived a bit later than usual to find Tom Rainford emptying water with a hose and pump from the gravel parking lot.  Tom managed to get the water down to an acceptable level for guest parking.  Fortunately, except for an extremely light drizzle, the rain held off the rest of the day.

Mark Knebel has been working on the north side of Grasselli Tower and his progress is shown in the first photo.  Some of you may recall that we have reported that when Grasselli Tower was moved from its original location in East Chicago, Indiana, that the movers discovered some fire damage to the 2 x 4's in the walls.  Newer 2 x 4's had been toed in to the damaged lumber.  We have no idea how bad the damage was except that it wasn't bad enough so that the tower building could not continue to be used by the Indiana Harbor Belt.  With Mark's removal of all of the old paint before he puts the new coat on, we think we can get an idea from this first photo.   Note the section of boards up above the lower boards.  There IS a difference!  It appears that these upper boards were probably put in to replace boards lost in the fire which obviously was limited to the second floor.  It was also at that time, that the narrow tower second floor windows (still in place on the lower level of the tower) were replaced with newer ones.   We have no idea as to when the fire took place except that it had to have occurred some time after 1928 as we have a photo of Grasselli taken that year that shows the narrow windows still in place at that time.  More on this first photo in a moment. 

The second shot shows Mark starting to wire wheel another section of the light green paint.   I've spent the last few times at the museum, scraping and putting primer on the steps and then painting them with our dark Hunter Green paint.  I finished this part of the project today as can be seen in the 3rd photo.  Mark also pointed out to me that one of the lower window sashes on the north side of the tower has apparently shifted doe to the high wind this morning.  At the end of the day, I put the sash back in place and applied some shims to keep it from happening in the future.  You can see the shifted sash if you go back and look at photo number one.

Finally, the two trains today were well attended with well over 100 total riders.   G.E. number 11 did the honors but a clogged fuel filter shut the unit down on the second run return trip.  Alco # 310 was fired up and went out to rescue locomotive and passengers.  The 4th shot shows the Alco pulling the G.E. and train across Mulberry Street as Kevin Kennedy walks from the street after stopping traffic on Mulberry.  The fifth photo shows John LaOrange cleaning out the fuel filter on number 11 after arrival back at the depot while engineer Steve Henrich's watches.  Conductor for the day was Bob Albert with Bob Gyurko as student conductor.  Joe Kingsbury and Tom Travis were car hosts while Tom Rainford handled flagman duties at the various crossings.

Have a great week everyone!

Les


 

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Painting at Hoosier Valley on a hot August day

Greetings!

Although low humidity at Hoosier Valley today, August 3rd, 2019 was still hot (mid 80's).  Despite the temps, Mark Knebel continued painting Grasselli Tower.  The two photos show his progress on the south side, which is the side in the worst condition.  It is believed that most of the boards on the tower date back to its original 1903-1904 construction date.   The museum is currently investigating replacing the bad boards.    With the west side and the south side of the tower now painted, Mark plans to move over to the north side where the boards are in better condition.  My work today was on the towers stairs and I managed to get all of the white primed areas done including the steps themselves, using the dark green paint.

Bob Barcus reported 80 passengers for the two trains today.  Bjarne Henderson was the conductor, Doug Kosloske in the engineers seat of GE #11 with Bob Gyurko on the train audio in Long Island coach 2937 with Loretta Kosloske as car host on the Katy open air car.  Tom Rainford handled crossing flagman duties for both trains.

Kevin Kennedy reported that the track crew put in 21 new ties out in the area of State Route 10 although they still need to be spiked.  Another 13 still need to be put in.

Enjoy your week!


Les

HVRM 2/2/19

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Shopwork Pics at Hoosier Valley 2/23/19

 

Greetings to  Everyone,

Has not been bad weather, well the annual meeting was snowed out, will be rescheduled for a later date.

A very cold week of -50 degrees hit the area, shutting down school, local work jobs, you name it, it was

closed. But things have rebounded to being nice again. NW Indiana had one snow storm of measurable 

snow an melted the next day. Work had continued on Saturdays in the warm shop.

The Porter engine has been the main issue, with the brake system being reworked. The entire engine 

was jacked up to roll out the trucks at both ends of the engine. Taking apart the air cylinders an cleaning

everything, replacing gaskets, cleaning out the inside of the cylinder of rust, burnt on grease, getting them

to shine. Tom Rainford in the first pic has been hard at work now for a couple of weekends cleaning the truck

on the east end of the diesel. A number of gaskets were purchased, but not enough for the entire job, so

the rest of rubber gaskets needed will be cut out of stock. Its been done before an has worked quite

well. Pic 2, Cory Bennett is working on some piece of air pipe under the engine, trying to take it off.

Some connections are going to be replaced with a flexible rubber pipe with connectors on both ends,

one end to screw into the air tank, other end to the supply air, making it easier to work on instead of

pipe. Pic 3 is Tom Travis on left, John LaOrange on right, grinding on a piece of metal. Taking the crud

off is a hard job. Others working on the trucks included Kevin Kennedy, David Cook, Joe Kingsbury,

Les Beckman an myself, Tom Travis doing some actual labor, well at least I got dirty, sure felt it Sunday.

Lunch was provided by Charlene an Sherry, who made beef raviola, french toast, cheese cake, strawberry

jello with cottage cheese, an other assorted side dishes. Cheese cake was the highlight. A new volunteer

joined the museum Saturday helping out in the shop in the afternoon. Bob Barcus worked the gift shop.

I might of missed a couple of volunteers, but  thanks to everyone working on the Porter. Oh Joe the

electrican was also working in the shop. Mark Kniebel was there also. Thanks to everyone who helped 

this past Saturday.

February is at an end, March is right around the corner, an after that is the first event of the year,

Easter trains. 

Everyone have a good, safe week. 

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Shopwork Pics at Hoosier Valley 2/23/19

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Short day at Hoosier Valley 3/23/19

Greetings!

Had a family situation this morning, so got a VERY late start to the museum today, not arriving until well after lunch.  Not sure what all was going on but I know that the boys in the Shop were testing one of their reconditioned Porter brake valves, and heard that the test was successful!  Loretta Kosloske was cleaning out the EL commuter coach.  Matt Lasayko had discovered a couple of C&O right-of-way concrete markers last week and we decided to try to dig them out for display.  So, that's what I tackled this afternoon.  The first photo shows one of the posts as buried amongst the trees and leaves.  I dug around the post and eventually got a hole down pretty far on one side.  Shad Vargo came over and tried shaking it by hand, and it moved!  Then asked Bing Risley to come over with his machine and Bing managed to pull the post straight up so that it wouldn't crack.  Bing transported it over to one of our display sites and laid it down.  The other two pix, show the two sides with the impressed lettering.  NEAT!  One post to go...but for another day!


Les

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HVRM 5/25/19

Subject: HVRM 5/25/19

Gents -

Couple of photos from Hoosier Valley today.  Bing (and Corky) unloading 2789 parts from NKP baggage car #344; Porter crew trying to get wheels put back into side frames; results
of Kevin Kennedy's efforts on train order post.  Hot day; a short shower; estimate about 90 to 100 riders for the two trains.

Les

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Another hot day at Hoosier Valley 7/13/19

Greetings!

Temp in the low 90's at North Judson today.  Couple of guest engineers in the morning.  I had a problem with the upper sash on one of the west windows in Grasselli Tower last week and made a temporary repair to get the window opening closed.  Today I got out the man lift and went over and made a more permanent repair (see photo 1).  We can now open the lower sash to let some air into the tower without worrying about the upper sash crashing down!

In the afternoon, I agreed to car host on the Katy open car.  Had a good crowd.  Twenty five rode with me on the 12:30 run plus a number of folks opted for the air conditioning in Long Island coach 2937.  We then had a tour bus from the Lafayette area come in for the 2:00 train with 52 riders.  Plus we had some other passengers besides the bus folk!  Bjarne Henderson was the engineer in EL Alco # 310 while Bob Albert was conductor.  Lots of other folks helped out with the trains today doing various jobs including Bob Gyurko, Shad Vargo, Tom Travis, Robert Barcus, Bob Jachim and Tom Rainford.  Probably missed some people.

Apparently Kevin Kennedy put the finishing aluminum paint on the train order stand (second photo) some time this week.  Looks sharp!

Mark Knebel continued emptying NKP baggage car # 344 of the steam locomotive parts, as can be seen by the example in the third photo.  Mark is also doing some repairs to the roof supports on the depot ends.

Thanks to Charlene Gyurko for a nice rib lunch with all the trimmings.

Have a great week.  Stay cool (if possible)!

Les