Memorial Day Operations

I was planning to operate the 308 and 309 today, but there's a problem with one of the motors on the 309, as explained below. We're hoping this is only because I put too much oil in one of the armature bearings, but we'll see. So instead I operated a two-car North Shore train, 251 and 714. The 251, a combine, doesn't operate very often, so it was something different for most of the visitors.

Here's the crew: myself, Joel Ahrendt, and Randy Allegrezza. Thanks to Max and his crew, 50th Avenue station is now open for revenue service, so we spent all day operating from there. It's an interesting change from the depot. Adam Robillard did an excellent job as dispatcher, and nearly every trip was different in some way. Several times we operated through station track 2, for instance, while the Zephyr or coach train loaded on track 1. The two car CTA singles also used 50th Avenue as a base. We occasionally used the west track, which has a wider spacing from the platform, without incident.

Here's our train next to the Electroliner, which was on display on the west track. I'm sure there will be more and better pictures posted of the North Shore cars.

At 3PM, we observed a minute of silence for Memorial Day, while a bugler from the West End Jazz Band played taps in honor of those who gave their lives for their country.