A big move and lots of pictures

 Moving the engine

On Monday the workers from Barnhart began the process of pulling the last of the generating engines from the power plant. They began by closing the street and installing two rails.

I did not wait around to see what happened next, but an hour and a half later most of the engine was out and the workers were done for the day.

One reason they did not finish getting the engine out is that they needed to widen the hole a little. They did that with a sledge hammer on Tuesday morning.

I left and when I came back an hour later the engine was out of the building and a large crane had arrived to turn it. The rails were on a turntable, and after the section of the rails that went into the building was removed, the engine was rotated.

I missed the actual rotation. When I next stopped by, the engine had been rotated, but not by 90 degrees.

By Tuesday evening the rotation was complete and a trailer had arrived for the engine. the trailer looks like two flatbeds hooked together, each with six axles. There were two jacks on each side of the engine and my guess is that they will raise the engine so the trailer can be rolled under it.

The engine is scheduled to leave town Wednesday.

Art battle

An Art Battle was among the activities at the Art in the Alley event on Saturday. There were six artists who participated, all from Indiana. The artists painted on sheets of plywood, beginning in the morning and finishing before judging in the afternoon. Two awards were given, a people's choice award and a judges' award.

Below is the entry for local resident Ryan Preston. Ryan plays an important role behind the scenes for the murals. He prepares the walls for the muralists.

Rein Bontreger painted a tied-dyed dinosaur. This may have been what he intended to paint when he asked to paint something in Iroquois Park.

I am not sure what Trent Musch painted.

Nick Abstract, who participated in mural week, painted this colorful abstract design.

The artist now going by the name suredidit painted murals in Rensselaer in the past but not this year. Then he was going by the tag metabyte. I was told that he changed his tag because Facebook changed its corporate name to meta.

Local artist Addy Cain did these sunflowers.

Who were the winners? The people's choice award and $800 went to Addy Cain and the $1000 judges prize went to Nick Abstract. Rein Bontreger came in second in both votes.

I had hoped that more of the artists who did murals for mural week would have participated, but they were exhausted from their week of painting in hot, humid weather. Several were still finishing up on Saturday.

I met the artists who did murals in Wheatfield. There will be a celebration of the murals on Saturday. There were a few Wheatfiel residents who were unhappy with the results but I did not get a complete story as to why.

Parking lot pictures

Most of the senior parking spaces for this coming school year have been painted. I may have missed a few and may have included some that were left over from last year.