Getting organized

Like everything else in life, sometimes you just need to take some time to get yourself organized. Work this weekend at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum was helping us reach that goal. A new railroad truck storage track has been built so we can consolidate our spare trucks which are in storage in various areas around the museum. Here we have our Lorain crane loading one of our spare freight car trucks in preparation for movement to our new truck storage track.

One of the museum's cranes begins the pick of one of our spare freight car trucks.

Touch down! The trucks rests on one of the Museum's flat bed trucks.
It is being secured for movement to the new truck storage track.

Signals on our museum railroad

Part of our work on our demonstration railroad is to create a working signal system that demonstrates a wide variety of signal types which were used on the railroads that served Rochester. Currently, we have several dwarf signals, a semaphore to guard our hill block and two sets of signals around Track #6 which is at the top of the hill out of Industry yard. For the July Rochester Chapter NRHS meeting held at the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, our signal department got some of our signals lit up for the night. Currently, the signal system is awaiting power installation which is part of our Restoration Building project so they are run temporarily off of batteries. Want to learn more about railroad signal systems? Come on out to the museum some weekend!

Our semaphore guards access to our "Hill" block.

A close-up of the semaphore mechanism which was recently repainted.

Out of the cab of Eastman Kodak Company #9, the signal shows red over red, so we stop with our train (consisting of MDT 12549 and PC 18526) to get permission past the stop signal.

A closer view showing the red over red indication on this former Erie Railroad signal.

Working around the museum

Due to the holiday weekend, the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum was rather quiet this weekend with a crew of about 15 people working. However, several jobs did get done including gutter cleaning on our shop building, painting of our semaphore, and repainting of our museum sign.

Museum volunteer Bernie Cubitt touches up his hand-painted Museum sign.

Using one of the museum's two bucket trucks, volunteer Scott Gleason cleans the gutters on the museum's shop building. The goal for 2003 is to have serviceable tracks into both sides of the Restoration building.

While he had the bucket truck out, Scott also repainted the mast of the semaphore controlling entrance into the hill block from the Industry yard.