This was a 5 star week in so many ways at the museum. We had almost 70 people for the Ground Breaking on Monday and thanks to so many people to make it happen and to Joanie for getting great food from Panera Bread. The planning committee including Andrew, Randy, Joanie, Cheryl and me, but so many people in the shop helped out as did Board Members like John Pollock plus a lot of help from Angela Taylor, our Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce rep, the Mayor and other friends of SRM in government. Huge weed whacking session Monday night with Steve “Superman” Storey, Dr. Ken, Barret, Kurt and me to get the area ready and lots of junk including bent rails, ties and more hauled out of the ground breaking area. We got many compliments on how the Building 4 area looked and of course the south side of Building 1, which Kurt started work on last week.

I don't know the final numbers for the Train or Treat event (ed note, see Randy's Ramblings above), but we had non-stop train rides, over 550 train riders, close to 400 children and many, many happy parents and visitors. I am sure the new sign and gardening around it plus the great work Tom has been doing on gardening inside the gate are all appreciated by our visitors. I even managed to do some mowing on the riding mower this week, so along with the weed whacking the shop crew did, the place looked great. One can only imagine how much revenue we would have gotten from the park train on a gorgeous Fall day in the 80's and not a cloud in the sky.

We also got our new Southern 89 foot, 10,000 cubic foot Hogshead tobacco box car this week and it is now on Tk 25. A coup for SRM as an historic rail car and I know we are working on some other acquisitions over the next year as we continue to grow, restore and maintain our great collection.

During the week, we had Ken and Bill helping Steve and I with the park train tracks. Georgia Paving brought in 3 truck loads of crusher run and the main park train crossing is amazing after their great team worked on it and this will allow heavy machinery to go over the crossing and not destroy it. Really appreciated it on Saturday with hundreds of vehicles using the overflow lot throughout the day.. Stephen Warner came out Saturday to advise Ken, Steve and I on how to prep the track for leveling and ballasting. We made it 2/3rds of the way around the track taking out kinks and doing major alignment for the final work starting next week to get the track back in service. Kurt and Chuck were off site, but they only have to do a few ties on the trestle and the tracks and ties will all be ready for ballasting.

Donald got there bright and early Saturday and he and I did a clean up of the middle of the shop with us cleaning off the work bench, putting tools and parts away and vacuuming the entire area. We then started work on the Davey so Dale and Nick H can start sandblasting the Yale battery box, Hartwell 2's hoods and the cab of 290 to get them primed over the next few weeks.  I then told Dale that we really needed to have #1111 ready for both Polar Express and an on-site wedding next Saturday night, so after he made a quick call to Andrew in Tennessee, he and John started wiring #1111.

Thanks to the addition of Ron and AJ Welch, the Xfer caboose is coming along quickly. This also allowed Bob, Lloyd, Doug and Nick W to focus on getting that done, work on some of our equipment up the hill, the Western Union and work on the troop kitchen car, now that Kurt is making new windows for it. Having AJ there to get under the Xfer caboose helped tremendously and nice to have so many of the shop crew actually doing shop related projects up the hill and down the hill.

Harry continues the work on #8202. Ben continued his work on #290, so both projects continue to move forward. Bill's Grill was on site, so nice to have the shop crew in the office sharing lunch instead of splitting between Rexall Drugs and Subway Saturday.

Allen continues work on the locomotive and passenger car brakes for the park train and he and Donald are now awaiting the new locomotive wheels from Allen Herschell Company in Buffalo. As the plan is now, the tracks will be ready for test runs prior to the park train locomotive being completed thanks to 14 of the shop, track and park train crews who have worked on it the past 3 months.

Nick H got there in the early afternoon and continued cleaning and painting the Yale crane and was there until dark and was last to leave SRM Saturday night. Looks great and I know he is looking forward to having the battery box painted with POR-15 and then working on the boom once the new battery is installed.

Sue still needs volunteers for Polar Express and anyone can play the role of Santa. We have sold out all the shows this year, even after doubling the number of shows, so any and all help is appreciated as this is a huge PR event for us and it brings it much needed revenue.

Amazing week and the shop crew keeps adding talented, intelligent and hard working people who are willing to do what needs to get done to keep SRM open to the public, trains running and keep our collection maintained and restored.

Best wishes, Jordan Rice, Shop Manager