Cool Working Saturday At HVRM 9-12-2015

 

Folks -

Below is Tom Travis's museum report for Saturday, 9/12/15.  I've also added a short

addition at the end.

Les

 

 

Greetings to all,
 
Saturday morning dawned at 53 degrees, cool for this time of the year. Over to the
west were rain showers, to the east was sunny. Down in North Judson it was right
in the middle, sun, wind, no rain. Sort of a perfect day.
 
Arrived around 8 AM to the museum. The Erie 310 was already outside, pulled the
C&O 2789 outside. Board meeting to start at 8am an was over by 9am. The big item
was to put gravel down at the city park for the fall trains, so unloading/loading could
be accomplished. Getting the used oil in barrels sold or removed from the museum.
Cleanup of scrap metal was high on the list also.
 
Soon after the meeting was over, Cory pulled the trailer over to the scrap metal pile
an was promptly filled up with scrap metal. Made a sizeable dent in the pile, with
one more trailer load to be loaded up next week. The sides of the trailer will be taken
off for boxes of pumpkins for the park. Two potties will be put down at the city park
for the month of October. This should speed up things for loading trains back up.
 
Steve Newland was noted working on removing old paint from Grasselli tower, an putting
primer on the wood.
 
I was asked to be a car host on the 12:30pm train to English Lake. Getting back to HVRM,
the train was made ready for the yearly trip up rare mileage track to Thomaston. Again
I rode the train on the EJ&E transfer caboose running the chair lift for a couple of passengers.
The trip was getting breezy out of La Crosse, but moved inside out of the wind. A short
stop at La Crosse while the Erie 310 was run around the wye for the return trip to North
Judson. Train arrival was a little before 5pm. Most of the HVRM volunteers rode the train.
Only a couple of people remained at the museum. A good time was had by everyone.
A good crowd on both trains today.
 
Fred Boyer had a large group of friends on the 12:30 trip using the EJ&E caboose.
Fred also did some needlegunning on the east end of the tool car.
John LaOrange put in a string of lights in the tool car for better visibility inside.
Matt Lasayko installed some new security cameras today.
 
Next Saturday is membership meeting at 8am in the depot. Have a safe week..
 
Tom

An addition for Monday, September 14th.  Ended up going to the museum today and working

on passenger coach #899.  Couple of photos included showing the car partially painted below

the window rail (I used the lift today), a second shot from the end showing the poor previous

paint results and the final result at the end of today.  Also discovered that Mark Knebel had

painted the Whitcomb and he showed up to finish some of the hand rails.  Two photos of

the Whitcomb are also included, one of which shows Mark at work.  I'm going to suggest

that we change the units number.  Years ago, we assigned number 27 to the Whitcomb as

we did not have the units history.  Now we have it and would like assign the number 950 to

the unit, which it wore when working for the Chicago Gravel Company.

Les

Cool Working Saturday At HVRM 9-12-2015

Greetings to all,
 
Saturday morning dawned at 53 degrees, cool for this time of the year. Over to the
west were rain showers, to the east was sunny. Down in North Judson it was right
in the middle, sun, wind, no rain. Sort of a perfect day.
 
Arrived around 8 AM to the museum. The Erie 310 was already outside, pulled the
C&O 2789 outside. Board meeting to start at 8am an was over by 9am. The big item
was to put gravel down at the city park for the fall trains, so unloading/loading could
be accomplished. Getting the used oil in barrels sold or removed from the museum.
Cleanup of scrap metal was high on the list also.
 
Soon after the meeting was over, Cory pulled the trailer over to the scrap metal pile
an was promptly filled up with scrap metal. Made a sizeable dent in the pile, with
one more trailer load to be loaded up next week. The sides of the trailer will be taken
off for boxes of pumpkins for the park. Two potties will be put down at the city park
for the month of October. This should speed up things for loading trains back up.
 
Steve Newland was noted working on removing old paint from Grasselli tower, an putting
primer on the wood.
 
I was asked to be a car host on the 12:30pm train to English Lake. Getting back to HVRM,
the train was made ready for the yearly trip up rare mileage track to Thomaston. Again
I rode the train on the EJ&E transfer caboose running the chair lift for a couple of passengers.
The trip was getting breezy out of La Crosse, but moved inside out of the wind. A short
stop at La Crosse while the Erie 310 was run around the wye for the return trip to North
Judson. Train arrival was a little before 5pm. Most of the HVRM volunteers rode the train.
Only a couple of people remained at the museum. A good time was had by everyone.
A good crowd on both trains today.
 
Fred Boyer had a large group of friends on the 12:30 trip using the EJ&E caboose.
Fred also did some needlegunning on the east end of the tool car.
John LaOrange put in a string of lights in the tool car for better visibility inside.
Matt Lasayko installed some new security cameras today.
 
Next Saturday is membership meeting at 8am in the depot. Have a safe week..
 
Tom
 
           

A rather blue day at Hoosier Valley 9/5/15

Greetings one and all!

This past week has seen a return to summer with highs in the upper 80's and low 90's.  This was the forecast for North Judson today, but instead it was a cloudy, blue day all day long with light rain on and off keeping the temp down to around 80 degrees.  Supposed to jump back to the low 90's tomorrow and Monday (Labor Day) before dropping down into the normal upper 70's later in the week.

Crew brought out Erie Lackawanna 310 to use for the guest engineer program only to encounter a problem with the Alco's brakes.  They had to fire up the GE 95 tonner for the guest engineers, pushing the S1 down to the Shop.  Doug Kosloske worked on it, and got the brakes working and the 310 was used on the regular passenger runs later in the day.

Tom Rainford worked on a wheel problem on one of the push flats and got some assistance from Bud Tibbie.

Cory Bennett, using some lumber that Bud had furnished just last week, made an enclosure for one of our trailers (see photo 1) to use when hauling museum scrap to scrap dealers.  A very nice piece of work, but Cory was a bit blue himself when he couldn't get the lights to work on the trailer.  He is shown in the second photo working on the problem.  Not sure if it was fixed by  the end of the day or not.

Speaking of blue, the third photo shows Steve Henrichs painting one of the levers in Grasselli Tower in this color. 

I did a bit of lettering today and the fourth photo shows some of those results on the door of the Mulberry Street watchman's crossing.  There was going to be additional lettering, but the drizzle started up again so will have to finish at a later date.

Talked to a couple today in the Pullman Troop Sleeper.  They were having no luck finding the deer that Jon Oram had placed on the N scale display layout of North Judson that is located in that car.  Seems to get a lot of folks!  Seach on! 

Finally, and continuing the theme of today's report, the final photo shows a couple of pieces that Mark Knebel had previously painted in blue which he has now put together on one of the museums short display tracks after nicely lettering them.  Both of these maintenance-of-way pieces were originally EJ&E, with the railroad itself donating the Fairmont boom car to HVRM quite a few years ago and more recently, Ryan Kertis donating the push flat that was numbered G1 on the J.

Fly the flag on Labor Day and enjoy the holiday.   And have a safe week.

Les 

 

Deterioration's not always a bad thing; Hoosier Valley 8/22/15

Greetings!

Arrived at the museum a bit after 9:00 a.m. to find a strange new artifact on the premises.  Turns out that one of the old telephone poles that the museum had acquired eons ago, had rotted at the base during the week and the wind had actually broken it with only the wire holding it in place.  The far end of the electric line ends up entering the old C&O motor car shed and photo one shows the pipe at an angle which also caused the electrical box inside the shed to be pulled from the wall.   After it happened, Tom Tittle suggested trying to use one of the poles that ran down the old C&O right of way and one was found in very good condition and was used as a replacement.  The second photo shows Cory Bennett up on the Lift putting the line on a couple of the old insulators.  Then the electrical box had to be put back in place.  I gave Tom Rainford a hand on this part of the project and the third photo shows Tom hard at work.  Incidentally, Tom jumped about two feet when the flash went off when I took this photo.   Flashes when fooling around with electricity are not a good idea.  Sorry about that Tom!  The fourth photo shows our new Chesapeake & Ohio artifact at the end of the day. Sure looks good!

We had some guest engineers this morning using GE Interlake Steel diesel #11.  Trains for the day included the 11, EJ&E transfer caboose #184, MKT open car #13833 and LIRR coach #2937.  John DeGan was engineer with Bjarne Henderson as conductor.  Car hosts included Matt Downs, Randall Downs, Joe Kingsbury, Louise Kingsbury, Rich Warner and Bud Tribbie.  Bud pointed out to me that there was a nut and washer missing from the ramp between EJ&E 184 and the open car and I managed to search the old Erie shed and find one and put it on before the 12:30 train to English Lake left the depot.

Fred Boyer and Steve Newland continued their work on the repainting of the south wall of Grasselli Tower.

Margarett Cook cleaned out some additional items from GTW transfer caboose #75072 and I took all of the stuff that remained and tossed it out.  Appreciate Bing Risley's help in taking the old rugs over to the dumpster and for Bud's help in cutting those rugs into smaller pieces for the disposal.  Only one cabinet remains in 75072, and Margarett says that she wants to save this for later use.  One other item saved was a plastic display case that Bob Barcus put in the gift shop in the museums depot.

Bob Albert continues working on displays for Illinois Central caboose 9914.  Bob's shown in photo 5 in the Shop, doing some cutting on the radial saw.  Some of the pieces shown are for a future exhibit of NKP oil drums.  Not sure exactly what that means, but I guess we will eventually find out!

Doug McGill came down to the museum earlier this week and loaded up his Plymouth 4 wheel diesel, with some assistance from Cory Bennett.

This afternoon, Cory showed me some chains in the Shop that belong to member Ron Schlatter and are maked with his name.  Good looking set of chains!

Just as I was leaving this afternoon, I suddenly realized that Mark Knebel had repainted the Nickel Plate Road camp car (our kitchen car) recently, as shown in the final photo.  Looks real good!  Might have to try to reletter the car now.  I did try some lettering on another project this afternoon, but the less said about that effort, the better!

So, some deterioration is not always bad as it resulted today in a new genuine railroad telegraph pole being placed on museum property and shabby looking paint on our kitchen car being replaced with a new sharp paint job.

Enjoy the summer weather folks!  Autumn is right around the corner.

Les

   

Digging In The West Shop----8-15-2015

Greetings to all,
 
Saturday was hot an humid. Not a good day to be in the sun, but there were workers
everywhere in the sun.
 
I arrived, an it was still cool, so I started to do some painting on the trim I had installed
last week. Got out the grey paint an tried to cover up the white paint. I walked over to
the manlift, which I should of moved last week, well again the tire was flat. It will not
stay inflated for some reason. Mark had it off an taken in to repair, did not find the leak.
So my best intentions were not accomplished. I did nail on the last piece of wood to the
bottom of the crack in the rear of the shed. Painted it grey also. Touched up peeling
paint areas.
 
Saw Mark, asked if I could be the flagger at the road crossings, as I had to leave early.
He said yes, that gave him an John time to move the freight cars back to the storage areas.
Moved everything off the Erie main line. They were done by 2pm. I flagged road crossings
for the 12:30pm train to English Lake.
 
The water line was replaced Wednesday, an covered back up. Water flows again.
 
Went over to the shop area to sign in, an found Cory, David an Bud digging in the west
shop area with the Bing's bob cat loader an the backhoe tractor. About one half of the
dirt floor is now cleaned out. Concrete an rail is on the way soon. Laying one section of
rail an pouring concrete may happen. If anyone needs nails. Norwayne Lumber gave the
museum a pallet of nails not needed. Some HVRM will keep, others either need to be
given away or tossed. If you need some, come over an see what we have. No activity
on the tool car or ND&W diesel. Margret was cleaning out more things in the GTW caboose
today. I did not look inside to see what is left in it.
 
Trains had 2 guest engineers today. Bjarne Henderson, student engineer, Doug standing
watch over him. Steve Hendrich was conductor today. Bob Barcus an Loretta manned the
depot duties today. Both trains today had good crowds on board. Did not get count, but
at least  100 people rode. Randall Downs provided commentary on the open air car.
Joe Kingsbury an Richard Warner manned the LIRR 2879 coach.
 
Steve Newland was working on the west wall of the depot, hot working in the sun for him.
Will need the man lift soon for higher work. Bob Albert worked on the orange IC caboose.
Said its ready to put artifacts back in display cases. Noticed Bing mowing grass near the
shop area. The demolished house project is getting closer to being done. A couple of more
dumpster loads should take care of it.
 
Margret prepared a nice lunch for the working members. ham sandwiches, fried potatoes,
bean salad, cake, drinks.
 
I will not be at the museum next weekend, Les will be back to work.
 
Have a good week everyone. School has started, watch out for those school busses.
 
Tom Travis 
           

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