Washout!

Member's Day 2008 was essentially washed out by the constant rain, so relatively little happened. Flooding was not as bad as it might appear, and there is no significant flood damage. So the three of us (David Wilkins came up from St. Louis) made the best of it we could.

I decided that this was a good opportunity to check again whether Barn 8 was leaking over "my" cars. There are no leaks over the CA&E cars, but I found there were three or four serious leaks over the IT 277 and 518. (This isn't quite as drastic as it sounds. The cars were moved to a new location just last week, so it isn't as though the cars have been rained on for the last twenty years.) I put plastic sheets over the roofs, and then tried to caulk up the leaks in the ceiling. This probably wasn't too effective, since the caulk won't adhere to wet surfaces, but I hoped it would at least slow the drips for today and tomorrow. This post shows a picture of what the caulking process does.

The three of us then used the rolling scaffold to check for leaks over every car in Barn 8; no more serious problems were found. A slow leak over a 6000, which is entirely aluminum, was judged not to be a problem.

Then we went for rides on the silver train and the heavyweight train, which operated without difficulty, of course. Here (R) is the crew of the silver train. L to R, John Bender, Linda Evans, Debbie Fowler.

The dining car Birmingham (L) was packed with passengers on its first trip.

And here's a typical passenger (R) in the sleeper Silver Ridge, obviously enjoying his trip. Note the rain running down the window.


I spent several hours cleaning and straightening in the 321.

Later in the afternoon, North Shore car 749 was brought out for several trips. To the right we see its beautiful interior. David got to operate it for part of a trip.

Finally, the big news is that Barn 11 is now under construction. Here are two views of the complete set of posts. This barn, when complete, will protect a large number of valuable pieces of equipment in our historic collection.