Andy Miller worked on the retaining wall behind the Bassex House hotel in preparation for paving the alley. John Shriver finished the guardrails in the carbarn ladder tracks and soldered them into place. Speaking of the carbarn, John Purbrick has taken a wonderful interior shot. It was among several he displayed at the Activities Midway. The picture reveals a damaged railing which John repaired this evening, along with staining more ties in Berkmanville and assisting Malcolm Laughlin in his composition of a Freshman mailing and survey. James Knight send out the mailing this evening. John McNamara and Ed Drozd worked on some scenic details at the back of the roundhouse, notably some additional weeds and some additional work on the fuel oil tank. The Green Building model was re-installed, complete with a blinking white LED on the antenna mast. We turned off the room lights and looked at it from the corridor - it's really cool! Ken Terrell and Claude Brown visited briefly.

Recently, Ed Drozd has been replacing the wheel sets on some of TMRC's freight cars. Malcolm Laughlin, who has been working on our freight car fleet, tested the rolling characteristics of some of the refurbished cars this evening and reported vast improvement. Ed also installed a new snowplow on his EMD demonstrator SD70M and supervised John McNamara's work on the fuel tank behind the roundhouse. In response to the Club's approval, Andy Miller arrived with three rolling storage bins purchased from Staples. They come in four-drawer and six-drawer configurations and have low enough profiles that they fit anywhere under the layout, including Berkmannville. He filled them with the plastic and wood building materials formerly storeed on top of the drafting table, resulting in a momentary reduction in TMRC entropy. For the sake of this report, James Knight was asked what he did and reported, "I had dinner."

As mentioned in a previous report, Ed Drozd has been installing improved wheelsets in TMRC freight cars. Unfortunately, switching operations near the express building in P-yard now encounter roll-away problems, as the mainline track there has a slight incline. John Purbrick worked on an electromechanical device to secure cars on that stretch of track. The simple solution, of course, is to require all strings of cars to contain some good old-fashioned TMRC "sand journal" cars. Speaking of Ed Drozd, he made a run to Stop & Shop, replenished our supply of Coca-Cola products, and (with the assistance of John Shriver) filled the machine. John Shriver completed the points in the car barn ladder and proclaimed that "MITCO is completely trackwork operational." Mal Laughlin battled with various measurement devices while laying out the plywood for East Berkmannville and proclaimed victory. Alex Vandiver spiked additional track in Berkmannville, and earned his TMRC key in the process. John McNamara did some work on the fuel tank behind the roundhouse and enlisted Alex's future aid in completing some ground cover in the area.