Restoration Notes: A Day in the Life of a Railway Museum.

Saturday, October 16, 1999

The Big Cleanup!!, an update from Greg Gneier

We had a truly great day this past Saturday - we got a LOT of work done, even though most of the student helpers had evaporated by noon. I believe we had about 50 high school students; most from the Burbank High School Key Club and the rest from the “Service & Education Program” - most of these kids were pretty good workers, some were fantastic!

We got a lot of cleaning done at the far East end of the yard and uncovered a number of things that have been “lost” under the leaves for years. In the process we unburied the drainage culvert and cleared a path so that the fork-lift could get to the batteries and other items stored in that area. There is still another good days worth of work in that vicinity, but it looks a thousand times better now. I am hoping we can now begin to have the park forces return to this area for regular grounds maintenance so we don’t return to the prior state of distress. However, we volunteers must keep the “stuff” in check and access paths cleared, etc.

Gordon completed the “tie-cleaning” out on the Right-of-Way and produced some neat stacks of ties ready to be sorted and put away. There is also a small pile of broken ties which needs to be moved to the scrap pile.

Danny and Tim headed up “hardware sorting” and it looks like they made a great deal of progress. Goodness knows there is still a long way to go, but they took a good bite out of it!

Mr. Ramsey was busy mapping and counting stuff all over the place and Yvonne answered the 1:00 p.m. lunch call right on time. Greg then found time to change Charlie’s engine oil!

Charles, Mike and Andy lead weeding and raking details which produced four dumpsters packed full of debris.

Nancy, Andy and some of the Travel Town staff washed a couple of the steam locos and swept off the crap on the roofs of the Hawaiian cars.

In the midst of it all, John Vertrees, Wayne Arbuckle, Edward and Bill ran the Car Tours as scheduled. And diehards Nancy, Andy, Wayne and Charles returned to run the car tours again on Sunday!

Brad spent most of the day fiddling with the infamous dump truck and then, when most others were sick and tired, he, Mike and John commenced hauling the old batteries out to the service yard - and they FINISHED!

In addition to the above, there was also an Allan Weeks “Rules Class” in progress and Joe, Jim and others working on crossing gate repair!

Many thanks to Linda for providing an endless supply of ice-cold drinking water!  Patrick, thanks for the propane.

Did I forget anyone?  Well, thanks to them too!!!

Greg Gneier

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Copyright (c)1999. The Southern California Scenic Railway Association Inc.