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
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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