Recreational Switching

What with two major impending events - the arrival of the CA&E cars from Trolleyville and the approval for occupancy of Barn 11 - there has been a LOT of switching going on. I was able to make it out to IRM Sunday for the first time in a month and a half and was immediately put to work on a switch move down at the south end of the property. The job was to dig out Union Pacific McKeen trailer T8, which will be going into Barn 11; of course the T8 was near the west end of track 142 so quite a bit of equipment had to be dug out. Jeff Obarek ran Joy 2 for the entire day; Joe Stupar served to direct and coordinate moves as well as run errands like procuring chains, throwing switches and bringing over flashlights when it got dark; and several others helped as ground men at various times including Mark E, Stan Wdowikowski, and Greg "The New Guy" Kepka. At left, Jeff shoves CTA work motor S373 west while Mark watches from the ground.

At one point it was decided to conduct a quick repair of C&LE freight motor 640, which had had its coupler fall off the end of the circle iron during a previous switch move. Joe was able to dragoon Warren Lloyd into bringing the forklift over, and in short order the coupler was back in place and the switching continued. At right, Joe serves as ground man while Warren runs the forklift; note the coupler hanging at an unintended angle. Finally, when the shuffling in Yard 14 was done, we moved CSL 4001 off the connector track and Jeff and Warren put the engine away. Just another day at IRM!