The piece of equipment pictured here, a Sumitomo-Built South Shore car, may just end up at IRM one of these days. These cars are important. After all, their delivery in the early 1980s allowed the South Shore to transform itself from "The Little Train that Could" into a modern commuter operation. Here, the Interurban Era lives, possibly in grander scale than even Insull could have imagined.
Those of us "youngsters" in the railway preservation movement often bemoan the fact that particular types of pieces of equipment were never preserved. Be it a New York Central Hudson, a Pennsylvania Railroad T1, a Pacific Electric 1100, or a complete TMER&L interurban car (especially one of the all steel ones built by the St. Louis Car Co.).
In making these wishes, or "complaints" we often forget the constraints that early railroad museums and preservation organizations operated under. In some ways, the "problems" are the same, time, space, money, and volunteers. With this in mind, we need to be thinking of equipment that operates today, like this NICTD South Shore car, and of it's post-service future. These cars will be retired one of these days, will we have the foresight we often accuse those who came before us of lacking?
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For people like myself, born in '78, these cars represent the South Shore I grew up with. As a 13 year old, creating my own South Shore adventures with paper route money and my parents blissfully ignorant, I thought of the orange cars as the history of the railroad and still do. Without at least one of these cars in a museum upon their retirement, guys like myself might not be able to take a trip back to what we remember with our own kids, much the same as my father did with me riding the cars of the other two Insull properties that survived in captivity. Time marches on, and what may seem disposable today is tomorrow's fading memory. I can't wait for the calendar that comes out someday with the Joe, 34, 1100 and a bright silver example of the interurban I grew up with.
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