Milwaukee Road Day

Today's first big event was the dedication of Barn 11 and the groundbreaking for the new library building by the Milwaukee Road Historical Society.  The MRHA has been an enthusiastic supporter of IRM for many years, and has provided funds to help restore various pieces of equipment and construct a barn to hold them.

Here we are in front of Barn 11, waiting for the ribbon-cutting to begin.

My favorite inspection car, of course, was on display.

The ceremony was conducted by the President of the MRHA, Bob Storuzuk.  

The sign on the barn was preserved by the station agent at Fond du Lac when the freight house was closed, and then donated to the Museum by his son.

One of the members donated a pair of nicely restored lanterns for display on the Lake City.

And here is the actual ribbon cutting in progress:

Then we all walked over to the location of the new building to built along Main Street, which will house not only the MRHA office, but also the model railroad department and the Pullman Library, as I understand.  One of the MRHA members drove here in this car:

Much of the day I spent working on patching up the 150.  Both ends of the car are in pretty bad shape, and we'd like to make them at least look better. 

Lots of other projects were being worked on, as usual.  Here Fred Zimmerman and Jeff Obarek are finishing up work on stepwells for CA&E 451.

Rich Schauer was painting the trolley pole for the 18 (1218).

Buzz was working on details of the Sand Springs 68.

Ed Woytula and Erik Lorenz were working on the Cleveland PCC.  Here is one of the new pieces for the under-the-floor wiring ducts which Ed was carefully making to fit.

After several fittings, pieces of Masonite were carefully fitted to the end of the 150 and attached.  When painted, this will certainly look better than it did.

The 714 was over the pit and being inspected by Joel and his helpers.

Here Nick is inspecting the controller.

Some people are just overwhelmed by a chance at stardom.

Nevertheless, the stepwells looks great.

Here we see Bill Wulfert acting as a tour guide.  The two ladies are the daughter and granddaughter of Ray Neuhaus, an IRM member in the early days whom I remember well from the seventies.  Bill was giving them a tour of the property, which they hadn't seen for many years.  They also brought out two CRT marker lights from Ray's collection, which will be very useful.

I also spent some time fastening up the piping on the west end of the 321.  It may have to be moved at some point.  If I were the MRHA, I'd sure want it out of my barn.

By the end of the day, the end of the 150 looks like this.

And, here at the Governor Mansion, the Governor assistants are busy fixing a J governor.  Rich has come up with an ingenious way of fixing leaks in the valves.  This one was removed from the 1797, and should soon be back in service.  We now have only 40 or 50 more to do.

And finally, tomorrow will be the UP Employees Picnic.  I won't be there, so if anyone can send us pictures of the festivities we would be most grateful.

I won't be there tomorrow because we're heading south to see the eclipse.  My wife has a cousin who lives southwest of St. Louis, in the path of totality.  Frank and Bevin will be staying near St. Louis. Erik told me he's going down to Champaign to stay with his brother, who's a physicist at Illinois, and they will go from there.  Lorne has already gone there with his camper to see the eclipse.  Maybe we'll have a few non-railroad related eclipse reports.  IRM will always be there, but the eclipse won't.