The Latest on the Big Green Thing

The world wonders, "what's the deal with that big green thing that's been in Barn 4 for what, like a year?" Fortunately, thanks to the tireless correspondence efforts of our intrepid staff reporter Gregg Wolfersheim (not to mention the lettering ministrations of Buzz, thanks to whom the car in question is no longer hiding its identity in shame), we have the answer! Gregg sends us the below report on Green Bay & Western 109.

We found a soft spot on the floor of 109. Here we have started to repair the sub- floor with a new piece of wood. You can see a hole below it.

This is after closing up the area.

Another area where the wall partition was in its caboose days. There were six places where the floor was cut open for some sort of support. Jack made individual pieces to fill in all of them.

Lettering was applied by Buzz.

Here is the south side. The number is a stencil at the moment. Those will be painted later.

The west end is painted green. Just the handrails and steps are left to get black.

Jack is hand sanding around the edges of the floor boards.

The beginning of creating the safety railing around the east stove. It will be similar to the other one.

Ralph and Jack using a floor sander to smooth out the wood floor. Soon we will be painting it.

Thursday Progress Report

I was working on doors for the 460 again.  Gerry helped me move them, as they're both very heavy.  The train door was moved from the table to lean against the wall.  It's upside down because I wanted to smooth out and repaint some of the inside surface of the bottom rail.  But I think it's now ready for final paint. 

And here's the bottom of the side door.  The bottom rail was completely rotted away, along with the bottom few inches of the stiles.  Ugh.  I cleaned it up as much as I could with a chisel.

It's not obvious, but the top surface of the bottom rail was slanted so that water, which is liable to get into a drop-sash door, will be drained out through the three slots into the inside of the vestibule.  Why not outside?  I suppose they thought those slots would look stupid.  But your guess is as good as mine.

After some work, I had a blank for the new bottom rail.  It still needs work which I can do more conveniently at home.  Notice that the steel sheet is held to the rail with screws.  That's good.

And on top of the bottom rail, this rubber tube was attached to act as a shock absorber if the window is dropped down into the door.  It's pretty tired, but still useable.

Well, enough of that.  I checked that the new scraper castings fit properly; the bolts line up.  They look great, and a lot of thanks to Gregg for transporting them for us.

Speaking of which, here we see the IRM janitors sanding and cleaning the floor in the Green Bay car.  This will really make a nice bowling alley.

Meanwhile, in the 306, among other things Phil was touching up the paint.  Note the mirror-like finish on the varnished woodwork!

Meanwhile, Gerry is working on the piping.  Almost all new pipes are required, and here he is in the process of installing them one by one.  This is the west (#2) end.

The east end is complete, except for some parts under the floor.

And finally, Tim is working on various parts of the 268 at once.  The interior is being varnished...

and new flooring in the west end of the car.

Tuesday Photos

Tuesday was another busy day in the shop.  Mostly what we see here is work on the 306, coming along nicely.

And then work on the next third rail beam... 

and the train door...

and a view of the next project, a 460 side door.

I'm mostly working on another big historical article you're sure to love.  Stay tuned!

Casting Call

Frank writes...

I wasn't out at IRM today, but Joel was, and he was kind enough to send the exciting photo shown here. This 200-pound box contains seven newly cast third rail shoe hangers for CA&E third rail beams, courtesy of State Line Foundry near Rockford. A huge thank you goes out to Gregg Wolfersheim, who drove out and picked this up today.

You may recall that the pattern that was used for these castings is an original Wheaton shop pattern that arrived just over a year ago, as outlined here. Many thanks to the late Wendell Dillinger, who preserved this pattern in the first place; to Mike Graycar and the people of the M&H Railroad; to Bill Wall, who facilitated the donation of this pattern to IRM; and to Richard Schauer, who brought all the patterns from Pennsylvania back to IRM.

Now, the work is far from done, of course. Each of these castings will need, by my count, five holes drilled: two large ones for hanging the shoes and three small ones where the shunt and ribbon fuse bolt on. The holes where these castings bolt to the wooden beam are part of the casting, but those may need to be drilled out a bit, too. After that, it will be on to the next part of the assembly! In the end, for each of seven third rail beams we will need to make two links, the shoe mount, and the shoe itself. Want to help? This hardware will end up being used on cars 451 and 453 so donations to the CA&E Steel Car Fund are always very much appreciated!

More Chipping

Frank writes…

Sunday was another day of needle-chipping inside the 451. The good news is that we're making real progress, and as far as needle-chipping is concerned, at least, the end is coming into sight... in the far distance.

Here's the progress at the end of the day. The main compartment is 10 windows long, so we're just shy of halfway done with needle-chipping the ceiling. That doesn't count the posts or the bulkheads, but those are also a lot easier because you're not working over your head. Of course, it also doesn't account for the wire-wheeling that will be necessary as the follow-up step. But that will go quicker.

Ted was hard at work for much of the afternoon wire-wheeling more baggage racks for the 451.

Zach was able to remove the partition door between the main compartment and smoker, as seen here. Thanks, Zach! He's got experience with this type of door thanks to having worked on North Shore cars that have the same mechanism. This door needs a bit of wood repair, but nothing major.

Zach also took it upon himself to repair the 451's spitter valve, shown here. He observed that this valve and the one on the 431 both have green paint on them, a very un-Wheaton-like color, so it's likely that they were bought off the shelf.

Here's the inside of the spitter valve after Zach cleaned it up. If memory serves, the piston he's holding is normally pushed up by the spring, visible to the right. When the pump is running, though, air pressure pushes the piston down, compressing the spring. When the pump stops, the piston returns to its normal position. At the midpoint of its travel, it briefly vents the tanks to atmosphere, allowing a momentary exhaust of air that "spits" out water sitting in the bottom of the tank. Nifty.

At the end of the day, once I'd gotten my fill of needle-chipping, I traced some letters off the partition.

Quiz time: do you remember what G, BC, and FV stand for?

Another end-of-the-day task was running a controller cover and MS switch cover from the 451, both of which were freshly painted back in 2010, over to Barn 2. The kind of paint we used 15 years ago is no longer available, but the Diesel Shop guys have volunteered to get the current "good" exterior paint variety matched to these samples. We appreciate it! The samples are in the foreground, in the back of the diesel shop's "gator," while in the background is the impressive new all-steel mezzanine in the southeast corner of Barn 2. I'm pretty sure that could support traction motors, if they wanted to store them up there. This area has come a long way since it was home to the 966!

Back in the car shop, some of the Saturday guys brought over a side door from the 460 that needs a bit of work. If you look closely, may notice that there's something wrong with the bottom rail. And if you look really closely, you may realize that there's no way to know for sure, because at some point the bottom rail became detached from the door and fled to parts unknown. Who knows - maybe it's in perfectly good condition, wherever it is. But a new one will be made and installed regardless.

In other news, Joel was moving parts, sorting rivets, and doing all kinds of other things to make Barn 4 and the shop extension more tidy and orderly. Zach spent much of the day working on air valves for the Charles City Western steeplecab, assisted by Richard. Tim was working on the 268/1268. Jimmy and Greg spent a very cold day out on the railroad, transferring signal feeder wires to new line poles. Dan devoted some time to investigating our stock of cutting shoes. Nick and Will were hard at work, too, though I'm afraid I didn't catch what they were working on. And Brian and Richard were working on S governors, making use of the air brake room, which has been mostly cleaned out of miscellaneous stuff, as shown above. The work bench on the left even has a nice new light fixture overhead so you can see what you're doing.

History of CA&E 409

 HISTORY OF

CHICAGO AURORA AND ELGIN

409

Photo by Frank Hicks - July 4, 2010

The magic name "Pullman" conjures up, for most people, visions of luxurious long-distance train travel in heavy, well-appointed parlor, dining, and sleeping cars.  While the company certainly did concentrate on main-line railroad operations, it also had a significant presence in the electric railway field which is not as well known.  And since Pullman was by far the largest and best-known carbuilder in Illinois, the Illinois Railway Museum has acquired an extensive collection not only of steam railroad passenger cars, but also of 19 Pullman-built electric cars, ranging from a tiny four-wheel streetcar and wooden rapid transit cars to later steel interurban cars, an experimental aluminum car, and modern rapid transit cars.  (Not to mention an entire Pullman Library!)  The subject of this article is one of the steel interurban cars.

DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION

Formed in 1905 from several smaller companies, the Aurora Elgin & Chicago Railroad consisted of two divisions: the Chicago division, operating the heavy third-rail line from downtown Chicago to the Fox River cities, and the Fox River division, with a lightly-built side-of-the-road interurban line from Yorkville in the south, up through Aurora and Elgin to Carpentersville.  The period immediately after WWI was a difficult one for the railroad industry as a whole, and the electric railway field in particular.  Wartime inflation, rising wage costs, and rapidly increasing automobile usage caused the company to go bankrupt, unable to meet its bond interest payments.  The resulting reorganization is too complicated to go into here, but basically the company was split into two parts, corresponding to the two divisions, since the Fox River division was definitely weaker.

Dr. Thomas Conway was a highly-regarded professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who had had an interest in electric railways for many years.  His 1908 doctoral thesis was entitled "The Traffic Problems of Interurban Electric Railroads", and he began providing consultant services to interurban lines in 1916.

A group of Philadelphia-based bondholders in the AE&C sent Conway to Chicago to safeguard their interests in the AE&C bonds.  Conway believed that with the proper investments in new equipment and upgraded track, the Chicago division could be made profitable.  A new company was organized: the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin Railroad Company, and on July 3rd (ironically enough) of 1922 it took over the third-rail lines of  the Chicago division of the AE&C.

Immediate investments were made to upgrade the third-rail main lines and improve running times, but perhaps the most noticeable development was the introduction of new steel passenger cars.  Although the industry had been building steel interurban cars for almost ten years, the AE&C was still running a fleet of wooden cars (of which IRM has a nearly-complete collection!)  Conway's associate William L. Butler was in charge of designing the new cars, and the nearby Pullman Company was chosen to construct them.

Builder's photo - Pullman Co. - Bill Volkmer collection

Among other things, Butler and his group undertook experiments to develop more comfortable seats and more convenient stepwells for the new cars, using a group of men and women of all ages chosen from the families and friends of the employees.  

Conway believed in publicizing the new improvements, and several publicity photos were widely published at that time.  

Demonstrating the new stepwell design - Bill Volkmer collection

Bill Volkmer collection

Besides their steel construction, the new cars had some mechanical and electrical improvements over the previous wooden cars.  Tomlinson tight-lock couplers replaced the Van Dorns used on the wood cars.  They have the advantage that they can be uncoupled by a switchman standing to one side pulling a chain, whereas with Van Dorn couplers it is necessary to go between the cars to pull a pin.  And there are no loose links to get lost or stolen.  Ordinarily the two types of cars were never coupled together, but a heavy adapter coupler could be used in emergencies.  Each steel car carried an adapter in an underseat compartment.

The control system was updated to C-165 controllers with closed transition, which are not compatible with the C-6 controllers with open transition used on the wood cars.  As a result, the steel cars have two jumpers over the train doors, one for traction power and the other for the buzzer circuit.

While the Pullman cars had a new control system, some of them, including the 409, were equipped with earlier DB-131 contactors taken from wood cars, in order to save money.  We believe that it was about this time, for instance, that the 308 was converted from a four-motor to a two-motor car, losing one of its contactor groups.  Of course we don't know, but it's possible the 308's contactors wound up installed on the 409!

Builder's interior photos at Pullman -- Krambles-Peterson Archive

Upon delivery, the new Pullman cars took over much of the main-line express passenger service.  They also seem to have been often used on the Geneva-St. Charles branch while that lasted.  All twenty continued to operate until passenger service was stopped without warning on July 3rd, 1957.

PAINT SCHEMES IN SERVICE

1. Early Red

Entire body was red; doors and window sash were brown; gold lettering with black outlining.  Sunset Lines herald is common.  Roof color is not certain.

Photo by Wilbourne Cox  Krambles-Peterson Archive

2. Maroon ("Coffee and Cream")

Body and window sash were maroon, except for the letterboard, end windows, and window sills, which were cream; doors were light brown or tan; gold lettering with black outlining.  Roof color is not certain.  Cars appear to usually have had the Sunset Lines herald on the sides.

412 at St. Charles, Oct. 30, 1937

Photo by Al Johnson   Krambles-Peterson Archive

Pullman cars appear to have been often used on the Geneva-St. Charles branch.  This picture was taken one day before service ended.

3. Blue ("Early American")

There were at least two versions of this paint scheme, although we have not found a picture of the 409 in particular in the earlier one.  The body was mostly a dark blue, with light grey along the windows, and red striping.  The end windows and train doors were red.  Roof was a light grey.  Most of  the Pullmans appear to have a grey stripe along the bottom of the side.  Sunset Lines herald was common.

Bill Volkmer collection

In the later version the roof was black, and there was no stripe along the bottom of the sides.  The Sunset Lines herald has generally disappeared by this time.

409 leading a three-car train at Lincoln St., Wheaton  Oct. 24,1948
Photo by Henry Stange    Krambles-Peterson Archive

4. Final Red 

Ends, doors, and sides below the belt rail were bright red ("Pimpernel Scarlet"), windows, posts, and letterboard were a light blue-grey.  Yellow lettering with black outlining.  Roof was black.  The vestibule interiors were the same red as the exterior.

409 westbound at Villa Park, June 26, 1957
Photo by Bill Janssen  Krambles-Peterson Archive

This photo is just one week before service was stopped without warning on July 3rd.  At this point operation was continuing on a day-to-day basis while court battles raged, which is why the train is running as an extra, I would surmise. 

REBUILDING

The Pullman cars appear to have operated with little change, other than paint, until the 1950's.  They then started to be put through the shops one by one for rebuilding as necessary.   The 409 was shopped in late 1956, and the most obvious change is that the original wooden window sash were replaced with aluminum sash.  At the same time, the original air brake system with M24 brake valves and automatic/straight air option was replaced with M23 brake valves and automatic air only.  As a result, the final red paint scheme is the only correct one for the car in its current configuration.  At some point, the original seats were replaced with newer ones without headroll, as seen here, but we don't know when that happened.  In any case, the car is preserved and restored as it was at the end of service.

Current interior  (RH)

PRESERVATION

After final abandonment of the CA&E was approved in late 1961, the remaining cars at Wheaton were put up for sale to museums, except for the St. Louis cars, which were retained in the hope that they might be bought by a rapid transit organization.  The steel cars had a much higher price than the wood cars due to their greater scrap value, so only three of the steel cars were selected for preservation.  The Illinois Railway Museum and Seashore each selected a Cincinnati; Gerald Brookins selected the 409,  the only Pullman car to be preserved.  All of the other cars from this series went to scrap in 1962.

In April 1962 the 409 was made up into a train with six wood cars and left Wheaton for the last time on its trip to North Olmsted.  It was painted in a red and white paint scheme based loosely on the CA&E maroon paint scheme, and operated for many years in occasional passenger service at Trolleyville.

Joe Testagrove collection -1966

Joe Testagrove collection -1966

In later years it appears to have been repainted with the white changed to light yellow.

Gerald Brookins died in 1983, and for several years the Trolleyville operation continued with volunteers doing much of the work.  The Brookins family continued to oversee the operation.  But in 2002 the family decided to sell the property in Ohio and move to Florida.  It was necessary to find a new home for the Brookins collection.

A volunteer organization was formed with the name "Lake Shore Electric Railway" to provide a way to preserve and operate the collection in the Cleveland area.  The plan was to locate it near the lake shore in downtown Cleveland, and the CA&E cars would be operated occasionally for excursions on the Greater Cleveland RTA system.  The 409 was moved to Cleveland in 2006 and stored in a subway tunnel on GCRTA tracks, but never operated in revenue service.

ACQUISITION BY IRM

The overall success of the Lake Shore Electric project had always been contingent on substantial investment by the city government of Cleveland, which never happened.  By early 2009 the city's financial crisis had destroyed all hope of this possibility, and the decision was taken to wrap up the LSE project and dispose of the collection.

The 409 and several other cars were sold to IRM, and they were moved to the Brook Park shop building to prepare them for shipment to Illinois.

409 at Brook Park, Cleveland   Jan. 17, 2010  (RH)

More than a dozen volunteers made journeys to Cleveland to prepare the cars for shipment, and the 409 and 451 arrived at IRM on Jan. 20th.

409 at Union, Illinois    Jan. 20, 2010  (RH)

The 409 was repainted and lettered in the authentic end-of-service CA&E paint scheme in time for the Trolley Pageant on July 3rd, 2010.  Since that time it has been used in passenger service on a regular basis, with occasional interruptions for minor mechanical issues.

409 in operation in 2017 (RH)

409 in operation in 2022 (RH)

MECHANICAL  SPECIFICATIONS

Car Body:

    Length:            56'10"

    Width:              8'8"

    Height:            13'2"

    Weight:            103,000 lbs.

    Seats:                56

    Trucks:             Commonwealth 7' wheelbase

Electrical:

    Motors:                4 GE 254, 140 HP each

    Controller:           2 GE C-165

    Contactors:        12 DB-131

    Reverser:             1 DB-409

    Field Tap:            1 ME67

    Line Switch:        1 ME160

Brakes:

    Motorman's Valve:        2 M-23

    Triple Valve:                1 U4A

    Compressor:                1  D3F

    Feed Valve:                  1 WH C8

    Governor:                    1 WH type J

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Art Peterson who supplied the photographs from the Krambles-Peterson archive.

Photographs from the Bill Volkmer collection  and the Joe Testagrove collection are taken from the website of the late Dave Mewhinney.

Technical data are taken from CERA bulletins B-5 and B-105 (or personal observation!)

Information on Thomas Conway from CERA B-140 by Ronald DeGraw.