Diesel Days

It was a hot time in the old museum on Sunday, with temperatures in the 90's, but the annual Diesel Days event seemed to go off without a hitch. I did some surface prep on the 205 and spoke with Rod about getting our paint color corrected; the paint we obtained last weekend is extremely close and just needs a little work to be spot on. The plan is to take our gallon of paint and our various samples in to the paint store during the week sometime, when their manager is there, and get the mixture corrected. Then the orange-ifying can begin!

I ended up spending most of the afternoon back on Veracruz 19, our single-truck open car. I was assisting Frank Sirinek, the motorman for the day, who had tired of baking in the 3142. The open car was popular as always and it really made the hot weather much more bearable. After we put the car away around 4:30 I headed up to the depot and took some photos of the some of the diesels.

One of the stars of the show was Green Bay & Western 2407, our ex-Santa Fe Alco "Alligator," which was just made operational for the first time at IRM a week ago. It needs a bit more work before it is ready for regular use but it was operating under its own power for the diesel parade.




The Nebraska Zephyr, the jewel of the collection if there ever was one, was out for the first time since Diesel Department workers spent weeks painstakingly scrubbing and polishing the stainless steel on the entire train set and the E5. The results are stunning - the train was practically blinding in the sunlight!




Other stalwarts of the diesel fleet were out too, including the C&NW F7, which will be going to Train Festival this week along with the Zephyr and our CB&Q switcher.





Then I spent a couple of hours helping Rod, Joel and Greg with some switch moves to put freight cars away that had been pulled out of the south yards for demonstration freight train duty. I spent much of the time buzzing around in the golf cart opening and closing barn doors, fetching water and the like. Joel pointed out that some of the last switch crews working at the end of the day were made up of Track Department and Electric Car Department volunteers. Who says the departments don't work together?