Twin City PCC Acquired - Update!

The next car to arrive from Trolleyville will probably be one we haven't even announced yet. IRM has acquired another car from that collection. PCC #352 was built for Twin City Rapid Transit of Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1947. When that system was abandoned in 1953 the car then went to Shaker as #63, and then to GCRTA. It was then preserved by Trolleyville. Frank Sirinek organized the fund raising for this one, which is said to be in very good condition and should be operable. Follow this link for a picture of it at Trolleyville, and this link for a good picture (of a car at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum) of what the TCRT paint scheme will look like. Pretty sharp!

Update: Tom Hunter sent me several photos of the car at MSM which he took last spring.

Thanks, Tom!

New Trucks and Tarp

Today the 321 was retrucked and tarped, thanks to cooperation from many Car Dept. personnel. The main people who helped with changing the trucks were Joel, Warren, Stan, Ray Weart, and myself. Here are some views of the progress during the day.

The needle beam supporting the car.

L to R: Ray, Stan, and Warren.

This was the first time the 321 had been off its trucks since it left Wheaton.

(L) Joel drives the forklift after we picked up a 4000 truck from its storage location along Bruneau Rd.

For tarping the car, we had help from several more, including Tim, Bill, Charlie, and Vic.

It was a lot of work, but things went well. Thanks to everybody who helped!

I also got a chance to ride the open car for a short trip.

What's Happening?

Here are the current plans, as best I know:

• The movement of the CA&E cars is still being worked out by Nick. We're hoping to have more definite info this weekend. Lots of coordination between various groups is involved, so it's not easy.
• The big project for this weekend will be to swap trucks under the 321 and then tarp it. One of the 318 trucks may still be inaccessible, so a 4000 truck might be used instead. The tarp is already on hand, as posted earlier.
• Several of us will be going to Cleveland for the following weekend, Nov. 14-15, to sort out and distribute parts.
• If you want to help, Stan W. is the person to talk to. Thanks!

The Open Car and Other News

Here are some pictures of our new open car, Veracruz #19, in Barn 4. There are some issues that need to be addressed, but basically the car is in good condition. Frank and Mike Alterio are going to check that the lights can be run on 600V. At Trolleyville, the lights were run on 120V AC while the car was in the barn, so it needs to be checked. There's also a broken casting for one of the truss rod anchors, which had been that way for a while; a new one will be fabricated.

Frank already found a replacement controller cover, as seen here. He also has a Brill seat frame casting of the correct sort. If you look closely at the upper right hand picture, you will see that at Veracruz the castings were replaced by bent pieces of rebar welded together.

Mike Alterio also spent some time working on the door mechanism for the West Towns 141. It's a real Rube Goldberg mechanism, but progress is being made in putting it back together.

I spent some time sorting IT parts, and I also went to the container to check on the parts there. We're hoping to do the truck swap on the 321 this weekend, and then tarp the car. While looking through the stored parts, I found a few IT antimacassars in storage; Bob B. had forgotten where they were. This will help restart the repro project. Here's one of the better ones in place on a 277 seat.

I also found a collection of paper items which had belonged to Maury Klebolt. It's mostly timetables and few Official Guides and so forth, but this picture of a Wabash Hudson caught my eye. Probably this should all go to the Strahorn.

There has been some controversy about the rebuilt South Shore sign from Gary, which will be installed between Barns 3 and 4, as seen here. (Of course, the sign itself is an artist's impression...) I don't think it will block the signal display to any noticeable extent. In any case, this decision is literally set in concrete, as shown to the right.

Trolleyville History

My friend Ralph Taylor gave me a newspaper clipping you might find interesting: an article from May 1962 about Gerald Brookins acquiring the first four CA&E cars for his new trolley museum in North Olmsted. (The 450's were acquired separately a couple of months later.)


Sharp-eyed readers will notice a few errors in general facts about the CA&E, but it's still a good look at Mr. Brookins' intentions. At the time, the only other cars in his collection were the four Fox River lightweights and two Cleveland cars. By modern standards, $20,000 sounds like a bargain!

Now that the collection is being distributed, somebody should make an effort to write a history of the Brookins museum. (I, of course, have no first-hand knowledge.) Gerald Brookins deserves to be remembered with gratitude for all he did to preserve electric railway history.

Update: Open Car Arrives at IRM!

Update: (Monday) Stan reports that the 19 was unloaded, reassembled, and operated as a test. Good work! I'm still trying to get pictures.

"Great car, we still have do some repairs but we meggered the motors and pump. Oiled armature bearings, axle caps and journals. Checked the controller and Frank put a new cover on along other things getting checked over. We made nine car line trips and it was neat, first for me and I was very impressed as to how well it operates..."

Our Museum's first complete open car arrived this evening (Sunday, Nov. 1) about 6pm, after an all-day trip from Cleveland. Unfortunately it arrived after dark, so this is the best picture I could take. The car will be unloaded from the trailer tomorrow. A small crowd gathered to examine the car and start "foaming," as we say. When it's put back in service this will be a great asset to the Museum. (I'm a foamer, too, of course. I got to ride the car a couple hundred feet down the access road.)

There was one minor mishap on the way: the controller cover blew off on the expressway. The driver watched another motorist roll over and demolish it without stopping, so there's not much we can do. It's thought we have some more controllers of this type (K10) so it can be replaced. Thanks to the guys from Electric City at Scranton who provided the truck and did the driving!

Meanwhile, Stan and Joe and the others are on their way back from Cleveland even as we speak. They'll have more news about what happened there.

--Details on the Open Car--

Veracruz #19 is a ten-bench single truck open car built by Brill in 1914 for Luz Fuerza y Tracción de Veracruz (Light Power and Traction of Veracruz) in Mexico, part of the third order of cars for that city. It is a standard Brill design, similar to many cars which operated in the U.S., and is in excellent condition overall. It operated at Trolleyville (and Frank and I rode it when he was about two years old!) Presently it is single-ended, but it was originally double-ended and we will want to restore it to that configuration. It is currently lettered for the Columbia Park and Southwestern.

While waiting for the open car to arrive, I did a little more work. I ground off the one last frozen bolt and removed the last stepwell from the 321, helped briefly by Jeff Obarek.

And as an update, the windows and a doorway have now been cut into the wall of the car shop extension. I guess that answers the questions we had.

And finally, sunset at IRM.

Update: News From Cleveland

Nick Kallas, Stan Wdowikowski, Joe Stupar, and Jeff the truck driver went to Cleveland this weekend to start working on loading up cars and parts from the Trolleyville collection. Our open car was closest to the door at the warehouse, so it will be the first out. We are planning to move it Sunday, and if all goes well it should arrive at the Museum on Sunday afternoon.

Update: the 19 has been loaded and should arrive at IRM this afternoon. It will go over the pit.

They also loaded up parts for the CA&E cars. We'll have more details as they become available, so don't touch that dial!

Kauai Plantation Railway

Hawaii is not often noted for its railroads, however many of the islands had small networks of narrow guage trackage. The man purpose of this was to serve the sugar industry, often carrying sugar cane from the fields to the sugar mill. The finished product was then transported to the docks to be loaded onto ships bound for the mainland United States and other parts of the world.

Most of Hawaii's railroad trackage was abandoned in the 1950s. One notable exception is the Hawaiian Railway Society, located on the island of Oahu. Another notable exception is the Lahaina, Kaanapali and Pacific Railroad, located in Maui, a railroad built in modern times as a tourist attraction.

On the island of Kauai, there are two rail-related attractions. I was able to visit one of them during my visit. First, the one I did not visit is part of the larger Grove Farm Museum. As part of the museum, they occasionally operate one of several 30 inch guage steamers. All of the major sugar cane railroads on Kauai were 30 inch gauge.

The attraction I did visit was the Kauai Plantation Railway, a newly-built 36 inch guage operation. The railway is located on the historic Kilohana Plantation. The plantation originally grew sugar cane, but has now diversified its crops to include many fruits. They have laid about 1.5 to 2 miles of track around the plantation in a double loop, complete with two wyes, to give varied length trips. The power for the day of our visit was a 25 ton GE locomotive, imported from another Hawaiian island. The other locomotive is Whitcomb industrial locomotive of similar configuration.

Our train comprised of an open car and a closed car, both newly built. The roster includes two other closed cars and another open car, as well as two flat cars. The steel flat cars appear to be White Pass and Yukon steel flat cars built to haul containers. These flat cars were the genesis of the open and closed cars used on the train. The trucks are interesting in that they have wooden journal box covers.
Overall, the trip was good, the plantation is fantastic. For the more adventurous, they offer a 4 hour train ride and hike that explores more of the plantation. I opted for the 40 minute train ride and tour.

I'm Back!

Greetings,

Just a short note to the readers of this blog (all 2 of you other than Frank and Randy) that I am back safe and sound on the mainland United States.

I spent all but one day of the honeymoon on the island of Kauai, known as the "Garden Island." I managed to visit 1/2 of the rail attractions on the island as part of our touring. Photos, commentary and other information will be forthcoming.

As fall marches on, expect to see more Dave's Depots posts, book reviews, and other "quality" content that you have come to expect from this blog.

He's Making a List

We don't have to wait for Christmas to get presents, not at IRM!

The tarp for the 321 that I had ordered online arrived via UPS, so I moved it over to the car, and Stan helped me load it onto the platform. It's 40'x80' and weighs 136 lbs. OK, so it wasn't gift-wrapped. It was still nice to get.

I also found out I won't have to travel to Cleveland this weekend; we got a message from Bill Wall with further plans on the move, so Nick and Stan should be able to handle the tasks for this weekend. That's a relief. The major parts distribution will take place in two weeks, so I'll go there then, along with several others from IRM. And I can't make any promises, but if you're all good little boys and girls we may be getting a really nice present sooner than you might imagine! For more Trolleyville updates, watch this space.

I also removed bolts from the one remaining step well on the 321; one of them is frozen, so it will have to be torched or ground off. Otherwise the car is ready for the truck swap and then the tarp. And I spent the rest of my time sorting parts for the IT cars.

Meanwhile, the new car shop extension is making great progress. At 11 AM, here's what it looked like. The workmen were starting to close up the gap with the existing shop.

By the end of the day, the exterior appeared to be complete. (R) Inside, here are the concrete footings for the truck rebuilding facility. The cement truck also poured concrete for Barn 11, I believe, but I didn't get a chance to check it out.

Finally, here's a little fall color.

Autumn at IRM

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, at least in the afternoon. But my camera battery died, so I don't have any pictures of fall color on the property. Maybe next time. The 714 and 3142 were in service, and by the time I left, the actors were busily preparing for the evening's Terror trains.

I removed some more tools from the 321 and made sure nothing will fall over when the car is jacked up for the truck swap. I also removed the brake hoses, since they'll be in the way. Stan and I went out into the field and looked at the trucks. One of the 318 trucks is on track in Yard 14 and easily accessible, but the other is stuck in the middle of a swamp in the material yard. Since it continues to rain, we have no feasible way to extract it. But we'll find something to put under the 321. The tarp has been ordered and should arrive Monday. And I did some more straightening and rearranging inside the IT cars.

Next weekend several of us will be traveling to Cleveland to inspect the cars, collect all the spare parts our cars need, and prepare for the move. I'll make sure my camera is working by then!

But I still need a picture. So a propos of nothing, here's a mechanical marvel: part of a switch on the Pike's Peak Cog Railroad.

More Preparation

I installed some more carpeting on the roof of the 321 today, so I believe it is ready to tarp. The used carpet came from an anonymous donor down the street from me. And then I spent most of the rest of the time removing my personal belongings and tools from the car, since it will be very difficult to get inside once the tarp is installed. That took longer than expected. For the time being, the baggage compartment of the 277 will be my workshop. Not much to see here, so let's look around a little.

On Sunday the crew did some switching, and the 205 was moved from track 81 to track 73, among its fellow streetcars, where it fits in much better. It also relieves the worries I had about backing the IT cars into it! Here (L) it is on 73, just about where the 309 and 321 lived for many years. The PFE reefer was then moved to track 84; here it is between the 218 and the IT train.



And contractors are making progress on framing the car shop extension over on the south side of Barn 4.




Preparations for moving the Trolleyville collection are in progress, and the excitement is building. I'll be going to Cleveland for the weekend of the 31st to help collect the parts that belong to our cars. News and views will be posted here, of course.