Car Shop Bulletin Board

Some pretty interesting documents have recently been found and copies posted on the bulletin board in the car shop. I photographed them for the enjoyment of our readers.

First, correspondence from 1958 between the Electric Railway Historical Society and the CTA outlining a purchase agreement to buy several cars now in the IRM collection: the Matchbox, both of the "green cars" (2843 and 2846) and snow plow F305.












Note that ERHS mixed and matched trucks on the Matchbox, presumably to obtain the best set available, and also that they acquired GE 800 motors for the mail car, which they never owned. Maybe they were hoping to acquire it? And at right, a time sheet of sorts recording some of the people who helped load the cars at 77th & Vincennes. Among the names on the list are Nick Kallas, Bill McGregor, Bob Gibson, Bob Selle and Charlie King.

Fifteen years later, in 1973, ERHS was coming to an end as an organization. It had been evicted from Bud Gnas' farm in Downers Grove, where its barn was located, and a decision had to be made about what to do with the collection.



At left, the meeting notice which was sent to Nick Kallas and signed by Bill McGregor, who was president of ERHS at the time. Below, the minutes to the meeting that decided the fate of the ERHS collection.












And the conclusion: the letter written to IRM offering the entire collection of street railway equipment to us. Today the ERHS collection forms the majority of IRM's operating streetcar fleet.