From Samsmeatm@aol.com Tue Mar 18 07:26:10 2003
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 21:56:44 EST
From: Samsmeatm@aol.com
To: lacost@aaicorp.com
Subject: BSM Update 2/24/03

Hello,

Saturday (2/1)

The car house shop crew spent the morning working on 264 checking the
lubrication, controllers and journals. Part of this task requires jacking
the car body up off the trucks to allow inspection of the wear plates and
getting grease applied to the proper places. The crew included Ed
Amrhein, Mark Hurley, Chris Howell and John La Costa.

The 22nd street shop crew continued work on the tamper and getting the
computer records up to data. The crew included Rick Obbink, Joyce
Boblitz, CJ and Bill.

John Engleman continued working on the O-gauge layout expansion.

Sunday (2/2)

John O'Neil was Dispatcher with Carl Thistel, Paul Ritterhoff, Chris
McNally and Eric Smith as crew.

Saturday (2/8)

All of the morning, and part of the afternoon was spent removing snow
from the line to allow Sunday operation. The snow removal crew included
Ed Amrhein, Dan McCaffery, Chris Howell, Chris McNally, Mark Dawson and
John La Costa. Little did me know what the following weeks would bring.

John Engleman continued working on the O-gauge layout expansion.

The 22nd street shop crew continued work on the tamper and getting the
computer records up to data. The crew included Rick Obbink, Joyce
Boblitz, CJ and Gary Fairbanks.

Just as we were getting ready to put everything away. 6119 decided to
stop working. After some quick repair work by Ed Amrhein, the car was run
back into the barn to await repair of the PCM controller.

Sunday (2/9)

Ben Bates was Dispatcher with Mark Dawson as crew.

Saturday (2/15)

Ed Amrhein, Chris Howell and John Engleman repaired 6119 and placed in
back in service.

Sam and his father worked on cleaning the cars.

Buster Hughes worked on the Trackless Trolley

CJ and Joyce worked in the 22nd Street shops.

By afternoon Ed and I agreed that the weather forcast looked very bad and
after a call to John O'Neil decided to close the museum  the next day. As
it turned out it was a good call. By the end of Monday we had about 2
feet of snow.

Sunday (2/16)

Museum closed.

Saturday (2/22)

The morning was spent by Ed Amrhein, Dan Lawrence, Dan McCaffery, Chris
Howell, Chris McNally, Dave Crow and Joe cleaning the snow off the line.
By lunch time it was clear that the standing water would prevent
operation the next day.

After we got back from lunch someone mentioned that there was a  small
water drip in the dispatcher's office. It only took about 3 seconds for
Ed to realize what had happened. While we had removed the rain soaked
snow from the tracks, we had not removed it from the roof of the
Visitor's Center. Ed Amrhein, Dave Crow and I ventured up top to find 8
inches of standing water along with over a foot of snow. The snow was so
dense that the water could not flow to the roof drains. The three of us
spent the next hours generating canals to get the water to the roof
drains. It would have been easy except for the fact that the roof is
easily torn so a shovel was out of the question. Back and forth we
shuffled with our water proof boots creating  the drainage cannels.

John