Monday News

This doesn't happen very often, but we have a news report on Monday.  No matter what day might be convenient to go out there, something will be happening at IRM.  

Let's start with the new parking lot.  It's been nicely striped and looks great.  Please clean any oil, grease, excess mud, or embedded tacks from your tires before driving onto the new surface.  The Museum police force will be watching!

And across the street, the Schroeder store is being equipped as the book store and gift shop.  No one was there today, but looking through the front window we can see the new shelves and some of the inventory already in place.

And off to one side, the checkout counters.  This will be a vast improvement.  Baggage cars were not designed for use as retail space.  By next year, we'll wonder how we ever got along using them.

I spent the first half of the day checking a few things on the cars and then switching them around.  We needed to put the 308 and 309 together in a train for an upcoming charter movement.  Switching out four cars is a lot of work for one person, but it's fun, and gives me a chance to check things out between annual inspections.

After this, I spent some time cleaning up and sorting parts in the 321, and then the 150.  

The west end of the 1754 is being completely rebuilt, as seen here.  Tim is making the various parts needed to replace rotted out wood and return this end to its earlier configuration, as we have seen before at the other end.

Many parts of the end are mortised and tennoned together.

Several other projects were going on that I failed to get pictures of.  Gerry has been unloading unwanted stuff from the MD cars, and today I briefly helped move some large rolls of upholstery material over to the Lean-3, where John McKelvey can make use of them.  At least in climate-controlled storage they won't get all mildewed.    Steve Iverson is visiting, and spent the day helping Frank Sirinek on his projects.  Paul was working on something related to the Milwaukee Road cars, but I'm not sure what.  And so on.

And by late afternoon, the B&G guys were installing fencing to guide visitors toward the Schroeder Store, which will also be our ticket booth for the Happy Holiday trains.  Carl is running the Bobcat which holds a pneumatic hammer for driving fence posts into the ground; the hammer is being guided by Dave with Andy helping.  Automation certainly speeds things up.