Greetings!
A raw day weatherwise in North Judson today! Cloudy all day with temps barely reaching the low 40's. At least it was warm in the depot this afternoon for the museum's regular bi-monthly membership/business meeting.
Things going around the museum today included some switching using Erie Lackawanna # 310. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the old Alco had an air leak and which needed to be looked after before the work could begin. Photo one was taken from Grasselli Tower. John DeGan had put out the blue flag shown at the bottom right corner of the photo and then went over to talk to members Tom Rainford and Bob Jachim while Doug Kosloske and John LaOrange started working on the unit. Eventually the leak was fixed. Later, the 310 pulled out equipment from the turntable lead track as shown in the second photo.
While this was going on, Cory Bennett and Dave Cook started working on putting down some additional ballast for the track that will eventually be put down behind the Shop building. More on that a bit later.
Meanwhile, as can be seen in the third photo, Lars Henderson (at left) and Bjarne Henderson prepared to start in again on the cleaning of the roof of C&EI tool car # A-1054. A messy, but very needed, procedure!
I spent the morning opening up Grasselli (from where I took the first photo in this report) and, when the CFL bulbs wouldn't go on for the second week in a row, I went over and got some replacements from our stock of incandescent bulbs over in the old Erie building. The replaced bulbs are shown in the fourth photo. Eventually, we can get some LED's to replace these incandescent's, but for now, this will work! Later I took some measurements on Kanawha # 2789 for a future project.
After the hot dog and chili lunch served by Margrett Cook in the NKP lunch car, and after the meeting, I found Joe Kingsbury doing some additional work on the windows on the C&EI tool car (photo 5).
Loretta Kosloske, who had handling the depot business in the absence of Bob Barcus, who had automotive problems this morning, reported that Jason Ciastko and Tami were manning a booth at the Mishawaka train show for the museum.
I mentioned earlier that some ballast was put down behind the Shop, and the sixth photo shows that results of that effort. The photo was taken from Arlington Avenue looking back toward the Shop building. I believe that the plan is that the ballast shown will eventually be the switching lead into the third track in the West Annex of the Shop. Still needed is additional ballast and various track materials including a switch.
Finally, John LaOrange mentioned at the membership meeting today that the old "train building" which was made from the bodies of two old 36' long Cudahy Refrigerator Line wooden refrigerator cars, needs to be looked at, and sooner rather than later. The last two photos show the current condition of the building. John had repaired the roof a few years ago, but nothing has ever been done to the original wood sides and the results of this lack of maintenance is now readily observable.
Have a great week everyone!
Les
