Sunday operations

 Frank writes...

While on Saturday I left in the early afternoon, on Sunday of Labor Day Weekend that was about when I showed up. I was scheduled to run the 309-319 on the 2pm-9:30pm shift. Unfortunately there was rain in the forecast, so we decided to scotch that plan. The new plan was that I'd just take over from the "day shift" crew on the CA&E steel train in the late afternoon. As it turned out, the rain never showed up. However everyone agreed that if we had brought the wood cars out, there would have been a deluge. That's how those things work, of course.

When I showed up, Larry and Henry were working the steel train up at the depot. The Shay was running the caboose train (though it was replaced as motive power by our SD7 around dinnertime) and the 415 was on the streetcar line. The crowd seemed pretty good.

The plan was for Joel and Zach to bring out IT 101 to join in the 2pm-9:30pm shift, and above you can see them going into service in a view from Yard 7. Given the number of visitors, and the fact that I was at loose ends for the afternoon, it was suggested that the Veracruz open car be brought out. Fortunately Jack Rzepecki showed up at just the right time to work as my conductor and we brought out the open car. Jeron helped out by switching the 3142 and Sand Springs 68, the latter visible above at the yard throat, out of the way so we could extract the 19.

The afternoon went well; pretty much every trip we loaded full (well, as full as possible given current social distancing guidelines) and left a few people in line on the platform to ride the next trip. The 19 was as popular as ever. Unfortunately I neglected to get any photos; we really just kept moving. About 5pm we put the open car away and headed up to the station to take over from Larry and Henry. With the 101 having just gone into service, and with train frequency lowered a bit since the forecast of rain was making the crowds abate, we had an hour or so before our first trip. Zach took the above photo of me in the cab of the 431 after hanging the headlights and lighting and hanging the markers.

The last couple of years we have tended to greatly simplify night operations by hanging markers at all four corners of the train, where they can be flipped from red to white and back when changing ends, and by hanging headlights on both ends. One of these days we'll run at night on Members Day again and use the kerosene-fired "bulls-eye" tail light, but hauling that thing through the train twice per trip is a real chore. The passengers always get a kick out of the lanterns regardless and always seem surprised that they're actually kerosene-fueled and not some kind of faux flickering battery-powered lights.

So Jack and I made trips at 7pm and 8:30pm, alternating at 30-minute intervals with the diesel coach train and the 101 (Jack pointed out that these were "vegetarian" main line trips because there were no meets). The crowd seemed decent and all of the passengers seemed happy. The 415 (visible in motion in the above photo) was on the car line. I brought out my Panatrope portable 78 player and played a few Glenn Miller records. The weather turned out to be very nice and I was told that ticket sales were good (again, given social distancing restrictions).

And finally, from earlier in the day, a submitted photo from our intrepid freelance photographer Jeron. Here we see the museum's new hy-rail bucket truck being tested west of the steam shop. Richard was able to successfully extend the boom all the way out and up to gauge the reach of this thing and everything seemed to work right. As you can probably tell, it will go somewhat higher than the platform on the 604, which will be useful in some circumstances. Later on, the "second shift" guys were switching 'L' cars around in the yards to put the 4000s back where they normally live and to get the 2000s out for some repair work to their lights. They were out in Yard 7, under the cars with work lights, when I left at 11pm.