A Postcard from Texas

I received a nice note from Steven Holding, who has been an IRM member since the early days. He now lives in Texas and is a BNSF dispatcher in Fort Worth. He writes:

I read with much interest your work getting IT 277 and 518 back on the road at IRM. I have been a member since 415 ran on a summer day from Olson Road east to the creek.
I grew up in Aurora and used to drive the trolley lines both in town and around Northern Illinois. We used to make a trip to RELIC, then out to Union, and then go to the Little Q and I would hear them complain nothing was ever getting done. So just having gotten out of high school, I decided I was going to do something about it and started to volunteer. I wound up working for Bob Bruneau on the Class B, and then the IT cars came. We scraped paint and painted, and found out the 518 was a wood car with steel sheets screwed on with round head screws and the slots filled. We even had some wood siding slide out the bottom of the car. I used to sleep in the 234. Just before I went into the service in '69 we rang the circuits out in 277. While doing that someone was kind enough to put the pole up. The arc from putting the screwdriver in shot the thing across the cab. I was on the bell end and it smoked the bell. We were then done for the day.
After the service, I got a new job with BN. I wound up working weekends, and a wife and growing family kept me away till I finally got a job with weekends off, but by then we were living west of Galesburg. So it was about once a month I got up, just before they moved me to Ft. Worth (I work as a Train Dispatcher.)

This is North Texas Traction car #25, which was restored by volunteers (including Mr. Holding) and is now on display in Fort Worth.

I did pull the maintenance at McKinney Ave before the attached project pulled me away from there -- that and my Dr. telling me to slow down. I have been able to make it up a couple times over the years, generally like last year one Wednesday working with Kutella. I had quite a bit of time on SS 68 and leaned how to repair roofs from Kutella, which I used to repair the North Texas Traction car. The front windows I scratch built. And all the side upper sash I repaired before they were sent out for glass to be put in. I got a lot of the research done and roughed in a lot of the repairs before the Dr. said quit. And I left it for other projects.