Anne put her horticultural skills to good use and cleaned up the flower
gardens at the station, removing a truck load of branches and trash. She
also trimmed the bushes. Bob Moore was weed wacking. At some point
during the week Tony made the pile of cuttings disappear.
Thursday, July 17
Anne started the day with a meeting to map out responsibilities for
festival preparations and for the two days of the event.
Artist John Cullen came and looked at several lettering jobs that he has
kindly offered to do.
To clear the breezeway for this weekend's festival and for a G scale
event to be held at the museum in two weeks, as a group effort we moved:
the mainline hand car to the Cadillac shed track and the handcar
in the breezeway to the mainline track;
the two baggage carts from the breezeway to the front of the station;
the unused interpretive sign stands into the fowler boxcar;
the arc welder into the express room;
the fuel drum under the fire escape to beside the tool shed;
the lumber under the fire ecape into the restoration building;
the steel roofing for the garden shed onto the ground;
the horse drawn plow into the mainline automobile boxcar; and
the three speeders into a line against the fire escape (bonus -
no more tripping over the chains);
two trolley carts down to the end of the main line.
George cleaned and tested the two bar-be-ques and moved them to the
breezeway. They are stored, less gas tanks in the baggage room. The
tanks are in the garden shed.
Tom moved a steel staircase from the container to beside 1112's cab for
visitor access. Alan cleaned 1112's cab interior and replaced some dead
light bulbs in the cab and he treated the headlamp to a brighter bulb.
There is space to store the stairway in the breezeway.
To start clearing enough space in the container for John Weir's tractor,
a second steel staircase was moved from it to under the breezeway fire
escape, and the track saw was also removed and chained under the paint
car near the switch project.
Alan cleaned inside the orange CN caboose and it is now ready to be
opened to the public.
Ross fixed a problem with the toilet in the ladies washroom by replacing
the kinked supply tube and a loose bolt to the floor.
Ross tried to repair the leaking faucet in the kitchen, it will need a
repair kit. Unfortunately the mini hot water tank in the kitchen didn't
like being disturbed and started to
leak. It had to be shut off. Ross will replace the relief valve.
Gee thoroughly cleaned the kitchen, including the inside of the fridge.
Ross returned two repaired screens for the end doors of the front track
caboose and took one from the back track caboose home for repairs.
Vandals at work.
Brian cleaned up the restoration building and removed everything from
alongside car 23 to give a clearer view of the car. He installed two
safety ropes at the edge of the platform along the length car 23. It's
safer but not perfect, so children will still have to be watched carefully.
Bill helped for a while, then went home to finish the safety rails he is
making for the hand car that he completely rebuilt last winter.
These will be installed on Friday so we will have 2 cars on two tracks.
Mike changed the mainline speeder's oil and cleaned and adjusted its
carburetor, reassembled everything and tested the engine. It will not
run at a constant speed, so we cannot use it this weekend.
John Weir and others continued to clear weeds from the two tracks.
Tom brought another box of books donated by the CSTM and he indexed and
catalogued about a dozen of them. Ross accessioned the newly donated
first aid kit, it is now installed in the blue caboose.
A ring of antique railway keys, including Grand Trunk and CNR, was
donated to the museum today. Too bad there's no way of knowing if the
CNR keys are Canadian Northern.
All of the accession forms, and some gift of deed forms were returned to the
museum under cover of darkness by a person "known". Tom is very
impressed by the level of detail recorded in the forms. We are now
planning how to get the basic information into a data base so we can do
searches in order to locate artifacts.
Ross had several locks re-keyed and the pins in others replaced to
increase our security of the collection and to reduce the level of
frustration with the shed lock.
Anne gave the museum's interior a good cleaning and Noel (her husband)
and Carl cleaned pigeon
droppings from the platform. Anyone for pigeon pie?.
Anne and the students are working on signage for the festival. The
students were kept busy between visitors with cleaning the station interior.
Gary brought his lawn tractor and hand mower and spent several hours
mowing. We must make an entry at the track gate so he can get his riding
mower over the track. A load of fill is required from the back 40. Also
we need to get him a gate key. Ross will do this.
The students painted the picnic table that was pressure washed and
scraped last week. We moved it into the breezeway out of the sun. They
also painted a bench, the wall repairs beside the men's washroom
entrance, and the gift shop door.
Ross moved one load of artifacts from the express room to the new
archives. A canvas mailbag was moved from the Fowler boxcar to the new
archives.
Ross delivered two small window A/C that he donated. One is for the gift
shop, one for the house upstairs.
Lunch of pizza was donated by Anne and Tony. Yummy.
Brian Kelsey.
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