Saturday Report

Another busy Saturday was spent out at the Museum, and I'm sure most of us were wondering where the summer went.  Be that as it may, we had a numerous crowd of visitors, and everybody seemed to be having a great time.  As usual.

I started out by installing the ersatz tack molding on the 150.  If I may say so myself, it makes the car look more like it would if it had a real canvas roof, although who knows how many people might actually notice.  But it's obvious to me, and that's enough to get the job done.  Next up, phony tack molding around the ends.  Stay tuned!

Down by the station, the 1630 was pulling the coach train, and as always was the center of attention.  The Steam Dept. guys always put on a great show.

Then we have a couple of L cars, operated by Dennis and Randy.  I didn't hang around long enough to get a crew picture, though.  Sorry, I'm sure you're crushed.

Over in the "Back of the Yards" neighborhood, Gerry is hard at work regrading the ground between 6 and 7.  Whenever we get a hard rain, a large pond would appear here, and Gerry kept complaining about it, so Dave started calling it "Lake Dettloff".  With some extra dirt and the appropriate grading, the water should drain off to the storm sewers, and this won't be so much of a problem.

And while I was wandering around, I happened to notice that the Hicks Chair of Mathematics is still in use, in a corner of Barn 7.  Did we ever tell you about this?

The chair itself was found in one of the car bodies we recovered from Lake Shafer back in 1996.  Frank was in high school at the time, and he repainted it and lettered it with various mathematical formulas and gave it as a present to his math teacher. (Frank writes: it wasn't a gift, it was a class project I was assigned!) I had mentioned that I thought it was amusing that at a university you'll have a "Chair of Philosophy" or "Chair of Physics" and so on, so this became the "Hicks Chair of Mathematics".  When the teacher retired, it came back to Frank and has been at the Museum ever since. (Frank: its recovery was actually more random: it ended up dumped in the high school's storage room and when the school was torn down and rebuilt, a manager for the school district - who was also my sister's godmother - happened upon it and saw my name. It was returned to me whether I wanted it or not.) I'm sure Pythagoras would be proud of us.

And then I spent some time checking and refilling the lubrication for the axle bearings on the 309 and the compressors on all four cars, in preparation for Labor Day Weekend.  Oil is well.

I went over to Barn 11 to look in the 321 for brake hoses, which I'm collecting for a planned swap with another museum.  We'll let you know when that happens, but in the meantime, switching was going on in the new Milwaukee Road Freight house.

First out is the 760, the first F-M locomotive built.

Next, the Milwaukee Road dynamometer.  This car is in very good shape, apart from the exterior paint, which should be attacked soon now that it's stored inside.

The Steam Dept. guys wanted to extract some machine tools from the Milwaukee Road baggage car.  Here Jeff Calendine is running the forklift.  This is car 2050, not to be confused with locomotive 2050.  Only slightly different.

And then I decided to spend some time removing carpet pieces from the roof of the 321.  These were put there back in 2009 to keep the tarp from ripping, and they worked very well.  But now they're just another eyesore.  I didn't have a ladder or a platform, and being alone I wouldn't want to use them anyhow, but with a long pole I was able to remove about half of the remaining pieces.  It was rather fun, I must say, as well as good exercise.

I also spent some time cleaning and straightening parts in the 150.

And finally, if you need a ride home, take the Boulevard Route.

Next weekend will be Labor Day, of course, and as we've mentioned before the CA&E cars are scheduled to run all three days, so come out and see us.  If the creek don't rise.

Update:  I always try to encourage visitors to ask questions, but today they had me stumped a couple of times.  Where's the 9911A?  Beats me.  What happened to the little 2-6-0 from Monee?  It turns out it was sold to the Gramlings and left the property yesterday.  You can see the proud new owners at this link.   We can only wish them luck.  And by the way, you can be sure that WE care what you think about Facebook or anything else.  More or less.