Grant and Mary Whittaker, from Merrickville, brought their own riding
lawn mower, push mower and trimmer and mowed the lawns. The museum has
not looked this good in years.
Ross has secured a donation of seeds for giant sunflowers that we can
plant in October. We should also plant some short annuals under them.
Could be spectacular.
Thursday July 1st.
1. Bill adjusted and lubricated the gears on the mainline hand car. To
test it, he had it up to 79 miles an hour. He was pumping so fast he was
little more than a blur.
2. George M. weed whipped the caboose line and elsewhere around the
property. The museum site is beginning to look quite respectable.
3. Doug and Alan were installing ties under where the # 7 switch will go
on the caboose line/restoration building lead.
4. John Weir was conducting tours. Brian gave tours of the restoration
building to a couple of families. Alan had a long conversation with a
couple from Barry's Bay.
5. Brian and Bill were installing more replacement boards in the paint
car (automobile boxcar) door.
6. John wants to bring his tractor to the
museum sooner rather than later. To that end, we will start to clear
enough space in the front of the container to store the tractor.
Friday July 2.
1. Alan installed the numbers on the front of his live steamer locomotive
displayed in the children's room. He also installed an interpretive
panel under the display cabinets.
Alan also brought out an early
1900's Globe school desk that he generously bought last week for the
museum's replica school car project. The museum now has three antique
school desks and a fourth that needs repairs. Duncan duFresne has
offered two more, bringing the total to six. About fourteen desks are
needed for the project.
2. Alan, Ross and Brian trailered a half dozen nine foot ties to the
restoration building lead work site. Alan with the aid of a track
jack and a steel bar lifted the outer rail going to the shed over the
adjacent rail and lowered it down. A bit more aligning and this can be
re-spiked. We are very close to needing the frog and points moved.
3. Ross cleaned up and patched a water damaged area on the wall to the left
of the men's washroom door. It will need another coat of drywall
compound and there is paint on hand to complete the job.
4. Tom worked on indexing eighteen railway books donated last week by the
Canada Science and Technology Museum. The books were duplicates at the
CSTM and Ryan Manson got them donated to the RMEO.
5. Doug worked on the track lead but had to leave early.
6. Bill pressure washed pigeon droppings on the platform and pressured
washed a picnic table and some barricades so they can be painted by the
summer students. As this works at removing old paint we will do this to
the cars before we paint them. Some scraping will also be required.
7. The summer students cleaned and then painted the building's bronze
historic plaque with
CP maroon. What a difference that made. They will second coat it today.
Then we will use a palm sander for polishing the lettering.
8. Ross, Bill and Brian took two trailer loads of artifacts from the
express room to the archives. There are 3 stoves and 4 teletypes to
move, then we can see what other large items lurk in the corners. Some
pictures were moved in the process -
the first of the paper artifacts to have been decontaminated for mold by
a prolonged exposure to alcohol fumes. Don't worry, it was methyl
alcohol. We wouldn't waste the good stuff. Absolutely thrilling news -
the missing 1940's pressed steel typewriter table was found under some
other furniture stored in
the house.
9. Ross removed the propane cylinder that had recently been placed in the
section house, because for reasons that are obvious, there's are laws
against keeping propane cylinders in enclosed buildings. It is in the
garden shed.
10. Bill and Brian moved the two heavy fold-up tables from the express room,
and set them up in the board room for Thursday's meeting of volunteers.
Earlier this spring, we removed the two tables from the children's area
because they are of a type that recently caused a fatality at a daycare
center in Ontario when a toddler pulled one over on himself.
11. Brian brought twenty of each of two John Cullen coloring sheets for the
children's room. He used photoshop to remove advertising and a coloring
contest from the sheets. One of each of the two coloring sheets was all
that we could find after the children's room was taken apart last year.
12. Bill and Brian brought a supply of screws, a few tools and a pressure
washer from the tool car to the restoration building, so they can be
used. They moved a track drill from the express room, to the tool car
for storage. The tool car is too far away for us octogenarians,
septuagenarians and Sexagenarians, to be considered an active tool car.
It is more a storage car.
13. At the end of the day we received a visit from two people scouting for
sites to shoot a major 1940's era movie. They want to use the station
platform and they will contact Anne about it. We gave them suggestions
for some other locations that they might be able to use that are in and
around Ottawa. They are looking for an old factory with tall ceilings
and floor to ceiling windows, to simulate a locomotive factory. It has
to be within about an hours drive from Ottawa. If anyone has any ideas,
let Anne know and she can pass it on when they contact her.
14. Gee Gee went to Ogdensburg NY and picked up a shipment of heavy
steel padlock covers. Now we can secure the cars against the vandals.
Ross and Brian.
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