Rainy day at North Judson 8/20/16

 

Greetings!

Had rain on and off at Hoosier Valley today.  Even a bit of sun late in the day.  Temps in the upper 70's most of the day.

Two guest engineers with John DeGan in the cab of EL Alco 310 instructing.

I had heard that Norfolk Southern had cut over the interlocking plant at Thomaston where the old Nickel Plate crossed the old C&O line, now owned by the Town of North Judson and currently operated by Chesapeake & Indiana.  Since it was raining and not a lot going on, I talked Tom Rainford and Bud Tibbie into going up to Thomaston to take a look.  We verified that the old C&O signals on the line had been replaced with new LED's.  Old signals missing and probably scrapped.

Some of the museum reports have mentioned our kitchen car (former NKP camp car #X58538) and thought I would take a photo at lunch today.  That's Joe Baker at the left, then Joe Kingsbury in the gray # 6 hat, John LaOrange standing, Bob Albert seated with his back to the camera, Dave Cook standing with his back to the camera getting some chow, Bob Barcus seated across Bob Albert, Margrett Cook in the background and then Cory Bennett with his hands folded at the right in the photo.

There was a bus with a group from Goshen, Indiana that arrived for the 12:30 train.  John DeGan switched over to conductor duties and Steve Henrichs was the engineer for the day.  The second photo shows the days rainy conditions with Steve in the parka, heading across Mulberry Street toward his waiting train.  John reported between 37 and 50 riders on that first train but only about 8 or so on the 2:00 train. 

I had opened up Grasselli Tower and decided to paint the numerals on the number 31 and 35 levers that Steve had recently painted.  Unfortunately, the 31 lever has locked in the forward position and I finally called Tom over to help me get it freed up.  Working on the lower level of the tower, he finally was able to free the lever up, and I finally managed to get the numbers on the two levers painted. 

At the end of the day, I went over to check on progress of the concrete project in the West Annex of the Shop.  As you can see in the 3rd photo, the steel wire mesh has been put in place and is now set up for the concrete pour.

Have a good week everyone!

Les 

Some morning relief at Hoosier Valley 8/13/16

Greetings!

After a hard rain in places on Friday and early this morning, the day in North Judson dawned cloudy with nice temps.  Unfortunately, the sun came out in the afternoon and the humidity went back up.  A little relief from the heat though, was welcome.

Board of Directors meeting this morning and secretary Mark Knebel arrived late.  That's because he and Jason Ciastko were out at milepost 215 (see photo 1), trying to remove the steel post that the C&O had put in years ago to replace the old concrete mileposts.  The numbers on those posts had rusted out and m.p. 215 is one of the posts that Mark recently repainted and numbered.  You can see the old steel post in photo 2, hiding behind concrete m.p. 215, a photo I took last week.   Jason later told me that they were unsuccessful in pulling the post out, but thinks that there is a way to do it.  A project for another day!

It was stated at the Board meeting that the agreement between the new freight operator (Lake State Railroad) and the Town still has to be finalized, so until that happens, Hoosier Valley will not be running trains to La Crosse.   

Last week I worked on the four number boards on Whitcomb diesel # 509.  I managed to get three of them done, but when I tried to finish the last one, the sun had made the board too hot to touch, so I gave up on it until a cooler day.  That day arrived this morning and I was able to paint the number on the board, which is the new aluminum board that Tom Rainford had made for the unit when the original fourth board could never be found.  Anyway, here's a photo (number 3) of one side of the unit with the number boards now all in place. 

I flagged the Mulberry Street crossing a couple of times today, then went over and gave Tom Henrichs a hand in his painting and installation of the trim around the chimney board in Grasselli Tower. We borrowed Joe Kingsbury's jig saw for this work after Tom forgot his at home.  The fourth photo shows Tom hammering some of the trim into place.  Looks real good.

In the old Shop building, the switch to turn on the light in the back end of the washroom area of the crew office, was located behind the door.  If you knew it was there, you could locate it in the dark, but for those who did not know where it was, it was a pain to find, if it even COULD be found.  Joe Baker took care of that today and installed a new switch which is right as you enter.  Exactly where you would expect to find it!   Thanks for taking care of that Joe; one other inconvenience we won't have to put up with any longer! 

Sparky Byers and Richard Warner, with an assist from Tom Rainford, worked on putting the new parts back in Interlake G.E. number 11.  I managed to get this shot (number 5) from number 11's cab window of Sparky (with his back to the camera) and Rich, hard at work up on the hood of the unit.  By this time, the sun had come out and it was HOT up there!  They got everything put back in and Tom reported that there were no water leaks.  Great news!

Margrett Cook provided lunch for the crew today.  Loretta Kosloske was ticket agent and Bob Barcus manned the gift shop in the depot.

Bing Risley was out cutting grass today.

Joe Kinsbury was working on C&EI tool car # A1054.

After reporting last week that the next section of track on the north side of the West Annex of the Shop had been ballasted and leveled, Cory Bennett, Dave Cook and John LaOrange put sand it the area around the track (see photo 6) in preparation for the concrete pour which is scheduled to be done sometime this coming week.

Photo 7 shows the arrival back in North Judson of the second passenger run of the day with Kevin Kennedy flagging Mulberry after he had flagged the "country" road crossings on the westbound run.  That's fireman John DeGan in the cab of Alco 310 while over in the engineers seat, was Doug Kosloske.  Bob Albert was conductor for both regularly scheduled runs.

You may recall from last weeks report, that we showed Bjarne Henderson as he scraped the loose paint off of the wood windows of the Pullman Troop Sleeper.  Bjarne came back today and applied a new coat of Pullman Green paint and yes, occasionally a quick wipe to take some paint off of where it shouldn't have gone!

Have a great week.  As Tom Travis reported last week, schools are starting to go back into session with starting times staggered these days.  The point is that kids are out there walking, riding bikes and school buses are very evident, so drive carefully!

Have a good week everyone!

Les 

  

 

Hoosier Valley Rail Road Happenings 8/6/16

Greetings,
 
Saturday was a wonderful day for trains. Cool breezes made the open air car very enjoyable to ride.
Good crowd on the first run, 2nd run was not too bad, smaller than first. The LIRR car went unused.
Everyone decided that the open air car or Bessemer caboose was the norm. Had one wheelchair
on the first run, family members rode with him on the EJ&E caboose. A new member, Terry manned
the lift an got some car hosting on the transfer caboose. Don Nickle from the INDY area was up
training on conductor duties. John DeGan was engineer, Steve Hendrichs was conductor. Bjarne
Henderson was student engineer today. Randall Downs did car host duties on open air car.
Bob Barcus an Loretta Kosloske were depot workers.
 
During down time, Mark Knebel has been repainting milepost markers on the line. Picture 1 is
one of the newly painted and numbered mileposts with first guest engineer on the way back east.
That's conductor Steve Hendrich's sitting on the platform of the Alco. Milepost 217 needs
to have some trees cut down to make it more open.
 
Picture 2. Bjarne Henderson scrapping the peeling paint from the Troop Sleeper wood windows.

Picture 3.  After the windows were scraped, Bjarne put Kilz primer on them.

 

Picture 4.  New section of track in West Annex of Shop after ballast was put down today.

Some inside work done by Cory Bennett, Mark Knebel, Dave Cook, John LaOrange.

Ballast was hauled down to the shop on the dump truck. The back-hoe 

tractor spread it out over the track that had been spiked down last week.

Tamping was done by putting the air compressor outside the door, air tampers did

a quick job of tamping ballast. Next will be bringing sand for go on the dirt floor.

Steel angle iron needs to be welded to inside of rail for wheel flanges. 

 

All of the tractors still fit inside, but is a tight sqeeze.  

Joe was putting up the first section of insulation in the ceiling of C&EI tool car #A-1054,

but photo didn't come out. The new kitchen car is  moving along now,

 

During the week, a new compressor for the LIRR coach car showed up, was on a

pallet near the shop door. Also on the floor was a new drill press all wrapped up.

No idea where it came from.

 

GE #11 still waiting for parts the engine. ALCO ERIE 310 running great.

 

Les Beckman started the day by painting numbers on the Whitcombs number boards.

Nests of wasps are in every little hole on the Whitcomb, as I was hit twice, once on the

wrist an once on the back of my neck. Need to get some wasp spray next week

to kill off these little pests, they are everywhere.

 

Thanks to Les Beckman for supplying photos in todays report.

 

Have a wonderful week an start watching out for those school busses back on

the road in the mornings an afternoons. School has resumed.

 

Tom Travis  

Getting it done at Hoosier Valley July 30, 2016!

 

Greetings!

Still muggy today, but temps a bit more tolerable.  Number of things got accomplished.

Two guest engineers this morning.  Passenger train total for the 12:30 train looked very good, but a light load for 2:00 train.

I saw that Steve Henrichs was working up in Grasselli Tower, so I went up there.  Steve needed help getting a couple of the levers moved back so he could paint another one, so we tried to figure out how to do it.  After many attempts, we were finally successful!  The first photo shows Steve finally starting to paint the lever.  Gotta start at the bottom!

Steve had applied the Indiana Harbor Belt herald to the area above the lockers (see photos 2 and 3) earlier in the morning.  This herald had come as a plaque on a piece of Masonite, and I had recently cut around it so it could be applied as shown.  There's another IHB herald installed in the tower, but forgot to take a photo of it.  Also note the photos of Grasselli that were recently put up on the wall.  Steve nailed another one up today that Bob Albert had given him; this one showing the tower being put back together at North Judson.

Decided to go over to the shop, and on the way, I found the boys draining the fuel tank on the John Deere tractor.  That's Dave Cook to the left in the fourth photo, with Tom Rainford holding the compressor hose into the tank.  Apparently, some one had put lubricating oil into the tank by mistake.  Note the hose into the white bucket with oil streaming out.  Eventually, they were successful and with diesel added, they successfully moved the Deere!    

Finally made it into the Shop and found the ties laid out for the next section of the north track in the West Annex (see photo 5).  Later in the day, Cory Bennett used the front end loader to remove some additional dirt (photo 6) so that a couple of additional ties could be put in place.  That's Dave directing Cory's efforts.  And then in photo 7, Cory is shown driving a spike home with the spike jack which is powered by the air compressor.  John LaOrange is at left, then Dave, Jason Ciastko applying muscle on a spike puller to keep the tie tight and Mark Knebel off to the right dropping spikes for additional tie work down the line.  Cory advised later that both rails were spiked down and ready to move on to the next step.

Finally, back to Grasselli where I gave Steve a little bit of help in putting the trim on one part of the chimney brick.  The eighth photo shows Steve doing a bit of trimming.  We needed some concave trim and I went over to Norwayne Lumber and Jim Mennis found a couple of nice pieces for the project.  The last photo, though a bit blurry, shows Steve putting those pieces in place.

Joe Kinsbury continued working in the C&EI tool car.

Train crew consisted of Andy Hershman as conductor, Doug Kosloske as engineer and Bjarne Henderson as student engineer. 

Bob Jachim and myself, flagged at the Mulberry Street crossing for various trains with Bjarne doing rural road flagman duties for the guest engineers and Tom Travis the same for the regular passenger runs.

Randall Downs and Tom Rainford were car hosts.

Bob Barcus was in the gift shop today with Tammy Ciastko doing a great job as the ticket agent in the depot.

Have a good week everyone. 

Les     

Suprisingly cool mid-July day at Hoosier Valley 7/16/2016

 Greetings!

The regular Bi-Monthly museum membership/business meeting was held this morning in the depot.   Number of things were mentioned including the info from Loretta Kosloske that HVRM revenues are down about $9K from the same period last year, and confirmation of the report that the number of operators expressing an interest in operating the freight end of the railroad has been reduced by the Town of North Judson from 11 down to two.  Those operators still in the running are Lake State Railway headquartered in Sawyer, Michigan and U.S. Rail Partners, with headquarters in Lemont, Illinois.

Our "Gandy Dancer" crew continued putting in new ties out toward the Main Street end of the museum.   The first photo shows (from left) Kevin Kennedy, Todd Flanigan, Mark Knebel and Kyle Flanigan.  Jason Ciastko also was a part of this work crew today.  Kevin reported later that they had put 7 ties in and all were spiked down.

Tom Travis provided rural road crossing flagman protection today for the passenger trains and the guest engineer trains, except for the Mulberry Street crossing which was handled early by Bob Jachim and later in the day by Kevin Kennedy. The second photo shows the second scheduled passenger train arriving back in North Judson, with Kevin protecting the crossing at Mulberry.  Todd was engineer today with Doug Kosloske conductor for both regular runs and for the Guest Engineers earlier in the day.

Bob Barcus manned the gift shop in the depot today with Loretta the ticket agent. 

For some time now, the number boards have been missing on Whitcomb # 509 allowing rain to enter through the hoods.  Decided it was time to put the number boards back in place.  Tom Rainford made a neat aluminum replacement for the one number board that was missing and I painted the other three original ones at home during this past week.  The third and fourth shots show Tom grinding some of the old screws off the frames in the hoods and in the fifth photo, Tom and I step back from our efforts to smile for the camera lens of Tom Travis.  Also thanks to Bud Tibbie for assistance as we managed to get all four number boards put back in.  Later in the day I started working on applying the numbers to the number boards, but that effort needs to be redone.

The next photo was taken in the West Annex of the Shop showing a string running from the end of the rail out toward the rear entrance of the building along with some dirt removed.  Can we actually begun thinking of working on this track again?  I saw David Cook a bit later and he said that a load of ties was on the way to the West Annex.  Great news!

Margrett Cook provide lunch today in the NKP camp car.

Steve Newland painted the trim on the two end windows up on the second floor of Grasselli Tower and his efforts can be seen in photo 7.

Sparky Byers and Rich Warner continued their work on the 95-ton General Electric diesel.  They say that they can see the light at the end of the tunnel now!

Finally, Mark Knebel has been using motor car #MW-2 to go out and check the track to English Lake each morning for any problems, and then using the car to go out to the area where they are doing track work on museum property.   The last photo shows Mark waiting for Kevin to throw the switch so that he can run the car back into the Shop at the end of the day.  I believe that this is former EJ&E car number 591.

The temps today were in the upper 70's but it's supposed to get hot again toward the end of next week.  A special La Crosse Library run is scheduled for this coming Friday (July 22nd) and help is really needed.  You don't have to be experienced.  Here's a chance to come out and help the museum!

Note, photos in this report by Les Beckman, except as noted.

Have a good week everyone!

Les 

Nice day at Hoosier Valley 7/9/16

Greetings -

Got to the museum a bit too late to attend the Board meeting.  Had a bad day yesterday when the wife and I had to put down our 12 year old Black Lab, Casey.  Tough decision, and I'm still not over it.  Anyway, it was a great day weatherwise with sun all day, a nice breeze and a high temp of 78 degrees.  I passed out the report on the EMD SW-1 to all of the Board members.  The unit is former Monon number 5 and has been offered to the museum.  Board will look over the report and make a decision.

Mark Knebel and Jason Ciastko were hard at work again on the Main Street (east) end of the museum putting in replacement ties.  The first photo shows Mark, with Jason adjusting his glasses, after another tie was put in.  Mark tells me that they have put in 51 ties on the various tracks down at that end.  Well done!

I opened up Grasselli Tower and had a few visitors during the day.  Steve Newland continued his work on the exterior trim on a couple of the windows on the second floor.

Work continued on G.E. diesel number 11 with Sparky Byers, Dave Cook, Rich Warner, John La Orange and Tom Rainford hard at it.

Later, John La Orange did some sorting of items on the storage racks in the East Annex of the Shop.

Bing Risley was out cutting grass.

Engineer of Alco 310 for the two guest engineers and the two passenger runs to English Lake today was John DeGan, with Steve Henrichs the conductor.  Bob Barcus manned the gift shop in the depot while Loretta Kosloske did her usual great job as ticket agent.

Bud Tibbie was the road crossing flagman all day.  The second photo shows Bud giving the "thumbs up" to Henrichs sitting in the fireman's seat of the 310 on the last train of the day as it crossed Mulberry Street on its way back to the depot.

Note the third photo, which was taken as we were shutting down for the day.  Over 20 folks lined up on the road leading up to the Shop!  What was their interest directed to?  The last photo shows what they were looking at; Kanawha 2789 being put away by the train crew.  Even though she's "dead", she is still an impressive site to visitorskev!

Enjoy the upcoming week!

Les

  

Short report for HVRM for the Independence Day weekend 2016

 

Greetings!

Saturday, July 2nd, 2016 turned out to be a beautiful day weatherwise at Hoosier Valley.  Temps in the low 70's with a nice breeze and plenty of sunshine.  Membership was just a bit light today which could be expected because of the Holiday weekend.

Two guest engineers this morning and with GE #11 still not available, EL Alco # 310 with used.

Work on the GE continues and the first photo shows Rich Warner (at left) and Tom Rainford on the hood of the 95-tonner, while John La Orange looks through the old maintenance manual.

Mark Knebel and Jason Ciastko put some more ties in on the Main Street end of the museum property.

Tom Travis and I dug out the replacement air pipe that was made a number of years ago by HVRM's Canadian member, Ross Robinson.  This pipe was never put on GTW transfer caboose # 75072 due to the fact that it was taken out of service and used as a static location.  Today, we did some preliminary work on the installation but then Tom was asked to assist on the train as a car host.  A project now just a bit closer to getting done.

Steve Newland put some new exterior window trim pieces on the second floor of Grasselli Tower.  The second photo shows him up on the lift while the third photo is a shot taken from the interior of the tower.

Bob Albert continued working on displays in ICRR caboose number 9914.

I didn't get a passenger count for the two trains, but there seemed to be a good number of folks that came out today to ride our two English Lake trains.

Have a good week everyone.  Don't forget to fly the flag on July 4th and remember our struggle to establish this great country!

Les