Getting close to turning the corner at HVRM 3-19-11

Greetings!   Well, a day in the 70's this past week, and a sunny day in the mid-50's today at North Judson, makes one think that perhaps we have turned the corner into Spring.  BUT, rain and colder temps are in the forecast for this coming week, so maybe not quite yet!   Meanwhile the nice temps found John LaOrange, Mark Knebel and Bob Jachim replacing a few old ties right in front of the North Judson depot building.  The location of the platform right next to the track prevented the newly acquired backhoe from being used, so it was doing things the old fashioned way with these ties; the old pull, push, sweat and pound method!  But the new ties did get put in!   Mike Koehler and Carl Grill, with an assist by Fred Boyer, finished the painting of LIRR coach # 2937.  The car is now wearing its Charcoal Gray body paint and Brunswick Green roof paint and looks sharp!  Mike still has to apply the Long Island lettering and various decals.  The car should be done this weekend.   Joe Baker and Bill Dauber helped Joe Kingsbury in installing grab irons on MKT 13833 this morning.  Louise Kingsbury had helped husband Joe during the week in giving the car a nice coat of bright red Katy paint and Joe K. used a newly cut stencil to start the outline of the reporting marks and number on the side of the car.   For lunch, there was soup, various sandwiches, scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage links and patties and bacon along with desert.   The business/membership meeting was held in the depot and a report will be coming in the newsletter.   I had started working on MDT 13385, one of our two steel, ice bunker, refrigerator car, in the morning.  These two cars had been held by Merchant Despatch Transportation for records storage at Chicago, after the company had gone to highway trailers on piggyback flat cars for moving perishable items.  Donated to the museum by MDT back in 1995, sister MDT car 14070 was cleaned up and restored back in 2002 by Tom Travis and yours truly, but nothing was ever done with MDT 13385.  Now we want to try to make it presentable.  One thing that MDT had done when the cars were used for storage in Chicago, was wire them with electricity, including installing thinwall on the outside of the car.  This is what I started to remove this morning, finishing most of the job by lunch.  After the meeting, I resumed work and got to the point where I had to remove the electrical work going into the inside of the car.  The lock on the door on the side I was working on would not open, apparently rusted shut!  Finally was able to get the opposite door opened, crawled over the boiler tubes stored on the inside of the car, and removed the offending electrical box.  MDT 13385 had its number "white lined", as the railroads used to do, so I started trying to sand that white (actually turned out to be yellow) paint from the side of the car where I was working.  Got most of it off.  Will still have to clean this entire car up.   Hope everyone has a good week.  Think Spring!   Les

FW: Old man winter continues to ignore calendar at HVRM 3-26-11

Hello!   Although we have had a couple of spring-like days since Spring officially arrived here in northwest Indiana, this past week was much more typical of winter.  Today at North Judson was a good example.  Although there was some sunshine, temps hovered in the 30's all day, briefly touching 40 before dropping back down again.  And a wicked north wind in the 20's and gusting into the 30's and coming straight down off of Lake Michigan, made the day feel like January instead of late March.  Still, work at Hoosier Valley went on.   John LaOrange, Dave Cook and Mark Knebel worked on track near the east switch of the runaround track.  This switch was in the very first piece of trackwork put on museum grounds when the museum crossed over Main Street back in 1988 or 1989.  The switch was built of various components and is thrown by an old Erie high stand switchthrow, the only one at the museum.   Rich and his friend Jeff, continued their work on the G scale layout that runs around the top part of the walls in the gift shop section of the depot.  A plastic barrier is being installed for safety of depot visitors.  Meanwhile, the UP passenger train, pulled by a A-B-A set of Alco PA's, looks and sounds wonderful!   Margrett Cook, Loretta Kosloske, Judy Boyer and Pat DeGan manned the gift shop today.   A train crew headed by Jason Annen and Andy Hershman, had the Alco out and pulled the string of freight cars over to the Shop area.  Andy, Mitch Montgomery and Kelly Lynch, with help from Jason, spent the day doing single car brake tests on each of our freight cars.  Some failed to pass, others did pass.  Those that failed will be worked on to bring them up to snuff.   Kyle Flanigan was at the museum today and told us that he had been granted a National Railway Historical Society award to attend their RAILCAMP this summer at Steamtown.  This is a great program for teenagers who are interested in railroads and rail presevation.  Kyle is very deserving of the honor.  HVRM is proud to have entered his name in for consideration by the Blackhawk Chapter of NRHS.  This is another great thing that Blackhawk has done for Hoosier Valley and railroad preservation.   Fred Boyer spent the day attaching platform hand rails and "Watch Your Step" signs to the end steps of Long Island passenger coach # 2937.  The LIRR coach looks great, with all of the lettering now on the car; LONG ISLAND spelled out in white on the cars letterboard, the car number centered on the car under the windows in red letters on a stainless steel type background, and the circled number 147 on each end of the car on both sides.  I am not quite sure what the 147 signifies, but Mike says it is authentic to this car.    Bill Dauber, Joe Kingsbury, Elmer Mannen and Doug Kosloske were working on the platform that is going to be installed so that folks can get from EJ&E # 184, our transfer caboose, over to the MKT # 13833, our new open air passenger carrying flat car.  Meanwhile, Joe has stencilled the outline for the car numbers and reporting marks and all of the car data, on the car and must now just fill in the stencils with white paint.   Bob Jachim had his drill out and was drilling holes in corrugated metal sheets for some project.  I forgot to ask Bob what the project was!  I will find out eventually.   I couldn't work on MDT 13385 since the crew was working on the freight cars, but by hanging around, I was able to check out the TTX (ex-Pennsy) flat car.  This car came in to HVRM lettered as TTX # 475037, but we have no idea as to the original Pennsy car number.  I checked out the replacement roller bearing trucks on the car and found that one set of trucks was numbered for TTX # 475062.  Perhaps this was the original PRR number!  So I checked the other truck to see if it carried the same number.  NO!  It was numbered for TTX # 251776.  What kind of a Trailer Train car carried that number?   So....no closer yet to an answer!   Steve Newland was removing the rotten wood siding boards from the west side of the northwest corner of Grasselli Tower.  Steve made the sad discovery that the diagonal boards under the wood siding was also rotten.  Now he must replace the underlayment in this area too!   When the boys finished the brake tests on the freight cars, it was getting on near 5 o'clock and I called it a day.  The train crew was going to have to switch everything out, putting the cars that passed on one track and those that didn't pass on another, so that they could be worked on.  They had their work cut out for them, and it was going to take a while.  I had been out most of the day, going inside to help Fred for just a few minutes and then breaking for a cup of coffee.  By the end of the day, I was pretty cold and threw in the towel and let old man winter win this one.  Spring is on the horizon.  I will fight another day!   Hang in there everyone!   Les

Windy day at HVRM 3-12-11

Hi!   A cloudy and very windy day at Hoosier Valley this Saturday.  With wind gusts up to 35 mph, the mid-40 temps didn't give much warmth.   The weather didn't stop Cory Bennett, Dave Cook, John LaOrange and Mark Knebel from getting the payloader and the "new" backhoe out and start replacing worn out ties on the main line track just east of the depot building.   About 12 ties were replaced by lunchtime with the backhoe making much easier work of the project.  Rather than the old way of digging out the old ties and then using a set of tie tongs to drag them free from under the rails, and then digging out the ballast so that the same set of tongs could pull the new ties into place using a good dose of old fashioned muscle, the backhoe just pulled out the old ties and pushed the new ties into place.  Thank heaven for progress!!   The 310 was fired up and with Elmer Mannen running the old girl and Bill Dauber sitting in the firemans seat, the crew went to work sorting out cars that were going to be used for our future vintage freight photo opportunity.   John DeGan was the conductor while Doug Kosloske was brakeman for the exercise.   I went down to the Shop and found Joe Kingsbury, Joe Baker and Bob Jachim hard at work putting together the center wood benches for the MKT 13833 open air passenger-riding flatcar.  Steve Newland walked by and told me that the Long Island passenger car had been taken down to the wye earlier in the week and turned around so that the other side of the car could be painted.  Steve and I went in and looked at the car and saw that MIke Koehler had put the Brunswick Green paint on the roof and end of the car which already had the coat of Charcoal Gray paint.  The car number (2937) also was attached to the center of the car below the windows and the lettering for the "DIESEL" and "WATER" caps had also been applied.  Missing on that side is the LIRR herald.  The stencil was apparently incorrectly done and Mike has to have it re-made.  Nevertheless, that finished side of the car looks absolutely great!   I then went back and gave the two Joes and Bob a hand with the Katy flat car.  When they broke for lunch, a group of five high schoolers from Bishop Noll H.S. showed up for a tour and I took them around the museum.  The undefeated basketball team from Bishop Nolll had won their early sectional game being played at North Judson/San Pierre High School and they had to find some things to do while the later game was being played to determine their opponent for the game at night.  A nice bunch of young men!   After lunch, Bob Albert told me that he had gone down and done some repairs to the crossing flashers on State Route 10 that had been bumped by a snow plow earlier this winter.  He then put some new historic photos in the depot waiting room, including one of the C&O depot in Malden, donated by Jeff Kehler and the C&O Historical Society.  Bob also told me that while he was looking for info on the NickeI Plate Road's old Burr Oak depot which he thinks might have been sold and moved, he instead stumbled across the news that an old Lake Erie & Western depot still existed in Hibbard, Indiana, a fact he was quite shocked to discover.   We continued work on the flat car with some additional help from Randall Downs, finally getting all of the center seats put together and bolted in place.  The car is really looking good!   The track gang was joined by Rich Warner after lunch and put in 12 more ties.  Dave got the dump truck out and with the payloader filling it, dumped ballast next to the track with the new ties.  Eventually lighter stone will be put over this stone to extend the station platform.   The switch crew continued their work after lunch and eventually had 10 of the 12 freight cars for the vintage freight train sorted and placed on the runaround track.  Those cars included NKP boxcars 15797 and 15979, NKP gon 45622, C&NW boxcar 284, MDT refrigerator cars 13385 and 14070, N&W boxcar 54880, WCHX tank car 1114, N&W hopper car 40639 and Wabash wood boxcar 49114.  Doug had told me that there were going to be 12 freight cars and when I asked him, he said that the other two were still over by the shop building; PRR boxcar 607627 and TTX flat car 475037.  Some of these cars will have to be repainted and/or touched up and all must be mechanically inspected.   Andy Hershman was doing some welding in the shop today.  Steve was trying to dig out the location where the concrete pad for the Grasselli Tower steps leading down from the landing to the ground.  Not a fun job with our rocky soil.  Others at the museum today included Pat DeGan, Margrett Cook and Loretta Kosloske working in the depot and Tom McKee, Bruce Emmons, Bob Barcus, Andy Roeske and Jason Annen.  My apologies to those I missed mentioning.     A busy day for sure.   Have a good week everyone!   Les

Dark and dismal, but bright! HVRM 2-26-11

Hello!   Had two days of relatively light snowfall at the end of this week, a reminder that Old Man Winter ain't quite done with us yet.   Dismal day today with temp up to 34 degrees and a bit of light snow in the afternoon.   Quiet day at the museum.  Mike Koehler and Carl Grill spent the week working on Long Island coach 2937.  They had painted silver on the metal framing around the windows but the paint wouldn't dry and was runny.  Mike apparently called the manufacturer and was told, yes, that's what you get.  So, they had to scrape off that paint and get new silver paint and apply it.  A real setback to their work this week!  But this afternoon, Mike and Carl spray painted and the bright news is that the east end and the north side of LIRR 2937 look good in their new coat of Charcoal Gray.  Still have to do the south side, the west end and the roof (which will be Brunswick Green).  Mike has also applied the red end marker lenses to the car.   Joe Baker was finishing up the electrical lights on MKT 13833, the open air flatcar.  Looks really good!    John DeGan worked cleaning the depot, including washing down the floors in both of the washrooms.  Meanwhile, Pat DeGan moved merchandise enabling Bob Barcus to tear down the smaller clothes rack.  This greatly opens up the area in the gift shop in front of the counter.   The wood stove in the Old Shop had not been started, so I cleaned out ashes and eventually got one of the wood matches to light and started the fire.  The problem with that stove is that it just doesn't give off much heat to that portion of the Shop.  It's more a case of workers getting cold and then coming over for a few minutes to stand by the stove and warm up a little bit.   After I finally got the stove going with a couple of the now nearly depleted pieces of cut wood in our indoor wood pile, I started sweeping up sawdust around the woodshop area.  While doing that, Chuck Ness showed up and during our conversation, he informed me that the Old Shop had originally been put up by a predecessor of McGill Manufacturing as a foundry building back in 1917.  I knew the building was old, but did not realize that it was that old!   Lunch from Keller's Diner today consisited of soup, hot turkey in gravy, sausage and noodles in a tomato sauce, various sandwich varieties with spice cake and/or a cantaloupe/pineapple/grape salad, for desert.   After lunch, I journied back to the Shop, stoked the fire with the last of the cut wood pile and then went out and got 3 armfulls of wood from under the snow cover.  By next week, those pieces should hopefully be dry enough to use in the stove.    Work continues to go forward on preparations for the coming passenger season, including the visit of NKP 2-8-4 # 765.  Loretta Kosloske showed Tom Travis and I, the new tickets for the upcoming year.  The back of each ticket contains advertising for three restaurants in town; the Wooden Nickel, Keller's and the Brantwood.  Receipts from the sale of this advertising space, helped offset the cost of the ticket printing.    Steve Newland packed items away up in our storage "attic" in the depot, and found a blue and white sign which Bob Barcus was most happy to take charge of, as it is from the old Pennsy Plymouth depot.   Doug Kosloske was working on the blue card covering EL 310.   Good to see Ted Fitzgerald, a long time member who is very active down at Whitewater Valley these days.   When I finally left at about quarter to 5, Mark Knebel was still waiting for Randall Downs to get back with some items for him.  Randall and Fred Boyer had worked the train show in Muncie today.   Enjoy your week everyone!     Les

FW: Snow leaves, sun shines, at HVRM 2-19-11

Greetings!   With bright sunshine and a temp up to 40 degrees today, most of the snow has disappeared from the museum grounds in North Judson.   Crews were hard at work upon my arrival at 9:45.   Mike Koehler and his painting friend Carl, were busy all day working on LIRR coach # 2937 in the West Shop Annex.  The south side of the car had had a very liberal coating of Bondo applied; so much so that the car sides appeared white!  Mike was smoothing out the roof and this side of the car.   John LaOrange, Dave Cook and Cory Bennett were in the other bay of the West Annex, working on the Payloader.  Since I was in Wisconsin last Saturday, I asked Dave how the repairs had gone on the new backhoe, and he said that it was running "like a top!"   Crew working in the Old Shop section on MKT # 13833, the open air flatcar, consisted of Elmer Mannen and Bob Jachim putting in two cut sections of 2 x 4's between each of the roof ribs of the car, while Joe Baker worked on the electrical.  That's right!  Joe volunteered to install lighting on this car and from the looks of it, is probably about 80% finished.  Meanwhile Joe Kingsbury was working on the cars roof.  I gave Elmer and Bob a hand, and then Elmer was eventually called away to help fire up the Erie 310 to do some equipment switching.  A short time later, Bob went down to talk to some visitors so I finished up the last few sections.  Hope folks don't look to close at that end of the car!  Eventually, the wood roof panels will be screwed down into these 2 x 4's and then a rubber roof installed over the entire car.   Elmer got the Alco running with the help of Bill Dauber and he and Bill, with Doug Kosloske and Fred Boyer as switchman and conductor respectivelly, switched equipment around.  The new valves for the 310 had arrived from Pittsburgh Air Brake Company after rebuilding, and been installed and apparently worked well.  EJ&E transfer caboose # 184 was brought into the shop for work.   Steve Newland bolted the one bottom stairway stringer from the Grasselli Tower landing, down to the ground so that he could measure how much concrete would be needed for the pad upon which the bottom of the stringers are going to eventually sit.  Steve also advised that the plan is to put heavy plastic over the levers in the second floor of the tower to protect those cleaned and oiled levers when he starts in on removing the old peeling paint from the second floor interior.  Steve also says that he intends to finish replacing the small section of rotten boards on the outside of the west side of the tower before the 765's arrival in May.   Bob Barcus reported that nearly all of the 2 days of slots for guests to operate the Berkshire when it is here this Spring, have been spoken for.  The cost for these guest engineers to sit at the throttle of the 1944 Lima built engine cost $765.00, so that is good news for the museum.   Margrett Cook, Judy Boyer and Loretta Kosloske were working in the gift shop today, helped by Andy Roeske and his youngster.   A great lunch consisting of tomato/pasta soup, meat loaf, hot Italian beef sandwiches, pasta salad and numerous other goodies was served.   In the afternoon, I took a ride to Monterey and looked over the old Erie depot there.  The 1883 structure is rough, but looks restorable.  Its location (16 miles from North Judson) with the rail connection no longer in place, is a problem.   Returned to the museum and found the equipment all put to bed.  Cory and John had found some bad leaks in the gas tank of the backhoe, so Jason Annen got out the welder and set out to patch them.  He then ground everything smooth.  Tank was checked but another leak was found.  So, Jason went back at it.  Eventually the gas tank was successfully repaired.  When I left the Shop at 4:45, John was spray painting the tank.   Have a great week everyone!   Les

Shades of Henry Ford at HVRM 1/29/11

Greetings!   Still much snow on the ground but a day where temps got up into the upper 30's, so some slush around.   Showed up in the Shop at about 9:30 and the boys were already hard at work on the new open flat car, MKT # 13833.  Went back into the West Annex and found Cory Bennett, John LaOrange and Dave Cook continuing their work on the backhoe.  Meanwhile, Fred Boyer was continuing his work on the windows of LIRR coach # 2937.  So, I wandered back into the main Shop and watched the work going on on the flat car.  Doug Kosloske was cutting the tops off of the tall side support posts.  I joined in and soon found myself as part of the team putting the three horizontal side rails onto the posts.  Elmer Mannen drilled pilot holes for each side rail through the posts, then Bob Jachim, up on the car deck, drilled through the holes, making them large enough for bolts to go through.  I grabbed a different drill from Elmer, and started counter sinking larger holes from the outside of the car, one for each of the three side rails into each post so that the long bolts wouldn't stick out from the side of the car.  After I was done, Bill Dauber, also on the car deck, pounded a long bolt through each of the three previously drilled holes.  Then Bob Albert came along and applied a washer and nut to each bolt into the counter sunk holes and finally, John DeGan, tightened each nut.  This "assembly line" of Elmer-Bob-myself-Bill-Bob-John, moved along quickly finishing one side of the car and then moving over to the other side.  Henry Ford's Assembly Line had nothing on us!  We managed to finish the job by lunch.  Others working on the flat included Joe Baker and Joe Kingsbury.  Randall Downs also spelled me for a while on the "assembly line".   We broke for lunch, which consisted of hot chicken/barley soup, cheeseburgers, lasagna, and assorted other goodies.   After lunch, John DeGan went over to do some welding for the boys working on the back hoe.  I visited with Fred Boyer who needed some help removing a short piece of rubber molding from one of the windows he was working on.  Fred reported that he was down to near the end of his third, and last, wire wheel and wasn't sure if he was going to be able to finish cleaning the paint from the windows on the south side of LIRR 2937.  Meanwhile, the boys working on MKT 13833 started putting the roof struts up on the one end of the car.  Joe had cut these struts at home during the week, angling then so that they had a slight peak so that the car would not have a flat roof.  Bob Jachim made a run to Norwayne Lumber for some additional long two by sixes, which were going to be needed for the other end of the car.  Bob cleaned the snow and ice off of these 2 x 6's, and I carried them in and set them up on some wood struts so that they can hopefully dry out a bit so that the Wednesday crew will be able to use them.  In the meantime, about 5 roof struts had been put up on the other end of the car before we ended up calling it a day in the Shop.   Other members at the museum today included Bob Barcus, Andy Roeske, Loretta Kosloske, Margrett Cook, Mark Knebel, Tom Travis, Chuck Ness, Tom Royce and Jason Annen.  Might have missed a few.  Sorry if I did.   Went over to the depot where some of us sat around and kibitzed for a while.  I noticed that Bob Albert had put up some new photos in the depot waiting area, these of Indiana Harbor Belt steam locomotives.  They look good.  HVRM's new website is apparently getting close to going on line.  Looking forward to that.      Steve Newland was doing some work on the G scale layout in the gift shop area of the depot.  Getting closer to operation all the time.   We may be getting a major storm toward the middle of this coming week.  At least, that's what the weather folks tell us.  We shall see.  In the meantime, we are nearly into February, which is a short month, so winter will eventually be ending.  In the meantime, hang in there, and have a great week.   Les

Cold outside, cold inside at HVRM 1/22/11

Greetings!   Cold morning with a light snow.   Wasn't sure if I was going to the museum today or not, but finally decided to scrape the snow off of the car and make the effort.  It stayed in the teens all day today!   Rich Warner and his friend, continued with the installation of the G gauge track in the gift shop area of the depot.  The depot was warm at least.   Joe Kingsbury, Joe Baker, Bill Dauber, Bob Jachim, Doug Kosloske, Randall Downs and Elmer Mannen continued work on MKT # 13383, our new open air flat car for riders.  Joe and Elmer and others, have also been coming down on Wednesdays to work on the car.  At least 2/3rds of the side posts have now been installed, along with other construction.   Fred Boyer was wire wheeling the metal window frames on LIRR # 2937.  Fred finished the windows on the south side of the car and moved over to the north side.  Mike Koehler has had put some new Bondo on the sides of the car when he was here, so I grabbed the belt sander and tried to smooth out some of these patches.   Lunch consisted of ham and bean soup, spaghetti, sausages on hot dog buns, blueberry muffins, cake slices and fresh fruit.   Despite a torpedo heater and the wood stove going full blast, the temp never got above the mid-20's in the shop buildings.   The cold finally got to us and things were wrapped up by 3:30 or so.   Stay warm this week.  And GO BEARS!   Les