The blue man is at it again! Hoosier Valley 8/8/15

Folks -

Good Day!

Arrived just after the museum Board meeting had started.  Board discussed possible donation of a Parlor Car and also a 1600 h.p. Alco RS-3, but moving costs would be high.  Also disclosed that the new plastic pipe for the water line has not yet come in.  It was reported that Porter 0-4-2T was loaded this past Tuesday and has left North Judson for Colorado.

The man with the blue paint can (Mark Knebel) has been at it again as evidenced in the first photo. 

Photo number 2 shows Fred Boyer at left applying new primer to Grasselli Tower while Steve Newland at right puts on light green paint over a previously primed section.

Bob Albert continued his work on the Illinois Central display caboose.

I spent some time looking again for the bell clapper for C&O 2-8-4 # 2789.  Found some other bells with clappers, but not the one for the Kanawha.

There were guest engineers for throttle time this morning and a nice passenger count for the two regularly scheduled trains.  In the third photo, John DeGan at left, Bjarne Henderson (behind John), Joe Kingsbury (facing camera) and Steve Henrichs, discuss the charging of the air conditioning system on Long Island coach # 2937.

It was mentioned that sand should be applied around the new water line pipe and the fourth photo shows that a load of sand is sitting in the museums dump truck awaiting future usage.

The final photo shows Tom Travis applying gray paint to the Payloader shed.

Cory Bennett and John La Orange worked on repairs for the first yard switch out near Main Street.

Have a great week everyone!

Les 

  

 

Successful trench warfare at HVRM 8/1/15

Greetings!

Nice day at Hoosier Valley today.  Still warm, but also less humid.

Arrived at the museum about 9:00 a.m.   Found Bob Jachim and Mark Knebel in the final work of restoring the torn up ground around the back wall of the museums depot building.  You may recall this area being torn up from last weeks report as the museum searched for a serious water leak.  Photo 1 shows Bob in the background with Mark working around the water meter.

When the leak wasn't found near the depot, museum personnel started looking for the leak on the old water line using the Payloader to dig a trench.  Results of that effort is shown in the second photo.  In the end, the water leak wasn't found....TWO water leaks were found.  The museum intends to replace the old line.

Other things going on around the museum included Dave Cook draining the oil out of the fuel tank of 0-4-2T number 6 (see photo 3).

I spent some time adding white paint to some of the numerals on the newly painted levers in Grasselli Tower.

There were a number of Throttle Time participants this morning and the regular trains of 12:30 to English Lake and 2:00 to La Crosse were operated.  The departure of the La Crosse train is shown in the fourth photo with Conductor Steve Henrichs at the right on the platform of GE #11 with student Conductor Kevin Kennedy on the left.  Doug Kosloske was engineer for all of todays runs.  The fifth photo shows the train westbound past Grasselli Tower.  Note that B&LE caboose #1989 is still not in the consist.

Fried chicken from the Wooden Nickel for lunch today.

Steve Newland continued his work on the south side of Grasselli (photo 6).

Mike Koehler, with help from a friend of his, worked on his LIRR RS-1 #467.  

Tom Travis is shown in the process of adding some corner trim to the Payloader shed in photo 7 while he is shown cutting a piece of trim to the right size in the eighth photo.

Bob Albert was working on exhibits for the ICRR display caboose.  He had to destroy a wasp nest over the platform of Illinois Central caboose #9914.  Way to go Bob!

Bob, Tom and myself did some repairs to the wood stepladder shown in photo 7.

Supposed to have moderating temps this week with highs in the upper 70's to low 80's.  Sounds good to me!  Have a great week everyone!

Les

 

Bright blue, light green and digging dirt at HVRM 7/25/15

Gents -

Arrived at the museum around 8:30 a.m. to see this site at the depot (see first photo)!  What's going on?  Turns out our normal water bill from the town of North Judson is for about 1,700 gallons of water per month.  Last month we supposedly used 58,000 gallons!  Obviously, we have a leak somewhere.  This is the effort to find it around the depot earlier in the week.  Unfortunately, the leak was not found there.  The second photo was taken a bit later in the morning after they started digging up the old water line. In this shot, Cory Bennett is operating the back hoe, with Mark Knebel down in the ditch while Tom Rainford gives directions.  When I left at about 2:30 p.m., this ditch was about four times longer, and the leak still hadn't been found.

A couple of throttle times today.  John DeGan was the instructing engineer with Bjarne Henderson as conductor.  Later, I noticed Steve Henrichs as the engineer with Joe Kingsbury, Bud Tibbie and Randall Downs as car hosts on the regular passenger trains.  Quite a few visitors and riders today including two bus loads of kids from a summer camp up in Gary, Indiana.  Good news is that Long Island passenger coach #2937 has had its air conditioning fixed and was in the trains consist.  With temps approaching 90 degrees today, that was really good news!  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the lights on Bessemer & Lake Erie caboose #1989 and, although Joe Baker tried to find the problem, the caboose was not in the train linedup today.  

After painting the dark green trim on the Mulberry Street crossing shanty last Saturday, I decided to tackle the coal bin.  The third and fourth photos show the before and after views.  Looks a little bit better I think.

Steve Newland has recently started work on the south facing wall on Grasselli Tower which was pealed badly.  The fifth photo shows him hard at work  while the sixth shot captures the patch already redone.

Doug Kosloske was working on GE #11 in the Shop.

Finally, a couple of shots taken around the museum.  The seventh photo shows the start of the flooring in C&EI tool car #A-1054.  And in the last photo, the results of someone (perhaps Mark?) giving the disconnected push car as coat of blue paint is shown.  Once removed, visitors may wonder why some pieces of Hoosier Valley's ballast were given bright blue paint!

Supposed to be 90 degrees this upcoming week.  Stay cool as best you can. 

Les

Hot, hot and moving about....at Hoosier Valley 7/18/15

Greetings!

Temps in the mid-90's at North Judson today.  Got to the museum in time for the regular bi-monthly membership/business meeting.  After the meeting, I found some dark green paint and started painting the trim on the Mulberry Street watchman's crossing shanty.  Sweat pouring off!

Tom Travis reported that long time member Harold Russell had passed away.  Harold had once worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

After the meeting, I found a can of dark green paint and started painting the trim on the Mulber  

We had at least two Guest Engineers this morning.  Doug Kosloske was engineer for the passenger trains today, with Bob Albert as conductor.  LIRR passenger coach 2937 still out of service due to air conditioning problems so train consisted of NKP bay window caboose #471, MKT open air car, EJ&E transfer caboose #184 and B&LE cupola caboose #1989.   

Bob Jachim provided crossing protection at the Mulberry Street crossing today while Tom Travis travelled out in his van to provide protection for the trains at Arlington Street, CR500 South, CR400 South, English Lake Road, Toto Road and CR650 West.

They decided to move the recently sold Porter 0-4-2T steam engine # 6 over to the loading area which necessitated switching cars around.  Also being moved over to the loading area was privately owned Plymouth diesel #1881.  Some photos of the moves are included.  Interlake Steel GE diesel #11 was used for  this operation with John LaOrange at the throttle and Cory Bennett and Tom Rainford on the ground.

Steve Newland recently applied new oil based primer to a patch on the south side of Grasselli Tower and today he put a coat of light green paint over that primer.  This side of Grasselli had experienced a lot of paint peeling and hopefully this new primer will solve that problem.

Stay safe everyone.  Enjoy the summer weather.

Les   

A hot and muggy day at HVRM 6/13/15

Greetings!

Managed to make it down for most of the Board meeting at Hoosier Valley yesterday.  Sunny all day with temps well into the upper 80's and

high humidity.  Good day to make one sweat!

There were a number of guest engineers running GE Interlake Steel number 11 this morning.  Steve Henrichs asked me to flag Arlington Street

and CR500W on the last of these runs so he wouldn't have to get off of the caboose to flag each of those crossings, and I obliged.  This was

a definite non-sweat job, but I forgot my ear protection.  The horn on the back of B&LE caboose #1989 is LOUD!

Back at the museum after these runs, Steve, who was conductor for the day, is shown in the first photo making sure that the brake valve on

EJ&E caboose #184 was operating correctly (it was!) and then is shown in the second photo just a bit later putting the air hoses on the EJ&E

and B&LE cabooses together after the regular passenger train was coupled to the Bessemer caboose.  Yes, that is Steve in the second photo,

even though his face is hidden!  John DeGan was engineer for the day on both the guest engineer runs and the regular passenger trains.

I went up to Grasselli Tower and painted white numbers on the five levers that Steve had painted earlier.  Steve thought that the levers looked

okay without the white painted numbers, and he may be right.  I told him that if he didn't like the numbers in white, he could paint over them with

the red, blue and green paint.  Results are in the third photo.

Fred Boyer continued his work on the exterior of the C&EI tool car using the green man lift  to get up to the top of the car as you can see in the

fourth photo.  Fred has done a heck of a lot of work on C&EI #A-1054.

Finally, in the last photo, new member Ryan Osmolski is shown cleaning up the B&O steam whistle that was on the Notre Dame & Western

Porter diesel.  Looking better already!

Other members were working on HVRM track, Bing Risley was cutting grass, Bob Barcus was in the gift shop, Loretta Kosloslke was the

ticket agent for the day while Bob Jachim provided crossing protection for trains at Mulberry Street.

Stay cool this week!

Les

 

   

A little color at HVRM for Memorial Day weekend 5-23-15

Folks -

Arrived at the museum to find that Bob Barcus had had three bright red "KEEP OFF TRACKS" signs made for the split rail fence

across from the North Judson depot.   Bob used the drill press in the Shop to drill holes in the signs, then removed the old signs

(no longer readable) and screwed the new signs into the wood rails in the fence.  I held the signs in place.  This is the kind of job

I like; Bob did all the work!  Photo of one of the signs included with this report.  Hopefully these new signs will keep visitors from

the dangerous practice of wandering onto the tracks to take pictures.

Gave Bob a box of Operation Lifesaver coffee mugs, donated by member Joe Gasiorek.  Bob will add these to the various items

being sold in the museums gift shop.  Thanks to Joe for this gift which will hopefully bring in a few extra bucks to HVRM. 

While down at the Shop building, I noticed Fred Boyer cleaning the sides of C&EI tool car #A-1054.

Threw another bunch of extra day lilies from home (Betty said we had too many) into the East flower bed at the museum.  The

three different color irises in the bed are currently blooming (see second photo).

Spent the rest of the day, scraping peeling paint, wire brushing the metal and then priming that part of the passenger coach below

the windows.  Cool weather and rain, stopped this job last fall, and now I'm going to paint this part of the car with Pullman Green

paint the next time I'm at Hoosier Valley.  The results of todays effort is shown in the third photo, which was taken from the manlift

after I had finished for the day.

Not sure what else was going on at the museum today.  Cory Bennett was running the Payloader.  Operating crew for the two runs

included Steve Henrichs at the throttle of GE #11 with Doug Kosloske as fireman/instructor; Joe Kingsbury and Randall Downs

as car hosts and Bob Albert as Conductor.  There were also some guest engineers in the morning, but not sure how many.

Enjoy the long holiday weekend everyone!

Les

     

 

    

Perfect weather (at last) at HVRM 5/2/15

---

Greetings -

Beautiful day at Hoosier Valley today to greet the first regularly scheduled passenger runs.  Temps in the 70's and sunny all day!

Day started out with Guest Engineers.  New schedule of two trains (down from three last year) with the English Lake departure at

12:30 p.m. and the La Crosse departure at 2:00 p.m.  Due to the tie replacement ongoing, trains were held to 10 miles per hour

between the depot and English Lake resulting in longer runs.  Then there was a sticking brake on the 12:30 train, meaning a later

departure for the second train which did not leave North Judson until 2:30.  The departure of the La Crosse train from the depot is

shown in the first photo.  Don't know the figures, but both trains seemed to have a decent amount of riders.  John Kimsey was the

engineer and John DeGan was fireman, Bjarne Henderson and Doug Kosloske were conductors with car hosts Bill Dauber and

Randall Downs. 

One always ongoing job at HVRM is cutting grass.  Bing Risley was doing it this morning and Joe Kingsbury (see second photo)

this afternoon. 

I managed to get some primer on the one wall of Mulberry Street watchman's shanty and the lid of the coal bin. Still have to put on 

some Bonzai tint (light green) after we get some new gallons from Sherwin-Williams.

Big news of the day was that the house and garage on Pleasant Street, that the museum had acquired some time ago, were torn

down today.  The last photo shows Cory Bennett, Bob Albert (with shovel), John LaOrange (up on the peak) and Dave Cook, taking

off roof shingles from the collapsed house.  I joined them for a while this afternoon.  Good day to work up a sweat! 

Bruce Fingerhut reported to me that he had planted 40 white pines out at the rest park on the biking/hiking/walking trail at SR 10/39

and CR 250W.  A welcome addition to the spot that I (unofficially) think of as "Wayside Glen" as the railroad name.

Enjoy the week everyone! 

Steve