Motion In All Directions

Today was another great day out at the Museum.  We had a very good crowd of visitors enjoying the nice weather and all the displays and operations.   The wood L cars were running, along with the coach train; the 3142 was on the car line.

As mentioned before, Dick Lukin was visiting and got to operate the 460 on a fan trip.

And my daughter who lives near Phoenix is here for the weekend for a Hicks family reunion, and brought along my shiny new son-in-law, who had never been to IRM before.  I think he was suitably impressed.

There are lots of activities to report on.   The 24 is now mounted on its motor truck, and work is progressing to get it operational.

 Here Tim is trying to clean off the motor lead connectors.   "You would think 50 years' accumulation of corrosion would clean off easier than this, but nooooo!"

Looking straight down through the motor hatch:

I have almost finished patching up the hole in the roof of the 460.  It should now be watertight.  The rebuilt part of the drip rail is only in primer, but otherwise it's complete.  It's too bad it didn't rain while we were running the car, so that assertion could be tested....

There was a good number of Track and B&G members cleaning up the material yard today.  This has several benefits: it makes the place look better, usable material is located, sorted, and available, and scrap metal is removed for sale.  Here, for instance, we have a large number of old ties and bridge timbers that we will no longer want for new construction.  By building essentially a plank road, we now have a big shelf for storing track material that won't ever sink into the mud.

Also, I tested a control jumper I had rewired at home and now have that available.

And then work continues on preparing for building the frame to hold the big "Santa Fe" sign near the entrance.  Dave Diamond and Jerry Lynn were hard at work preparing the forms for the concrete.

And work is progressing on getting the IC Highliners operational.  That's Rich Schauer on the right, with a couple of the new guys.  Sorry, I should know their names but don't.  I was of course furious that they stole my big blue flag, but I guess I've calmed down.   Sort of.

And finally, there was a moment of pure Shakespearean terror.  Just as I was getting ready to leave the property, I saw this tree coming towards me.  It's too bad I didn't have time to set up for a video of it.  A moving tree, I tell you!  Who can impress the forest?  I couldn't get out of there fast enough.  

Well, maybe I'm doomed, or maybe it was just part of the process of cleaning up the material yard.   You be the judge.