Illinois Traction Society Meet

The eagerly-awaited IT Society Meet was held at IRM today, and was a great success. A good time was had by all. I was working as a trainman on the orange cars, and so did not have many opportunities to take pictures. I'm counting on friends such as Chuck Amstein to fill in the gaps.

From front to back: business car 233, locomotive 1565, line car 1702.

The orange train made several main-line trips. We had a seven man crew most of the time.

Combine 277

Coach 518

Business parlor car 234

Only IT equipment operated today; besides the three-car train, there were the 101, 1565 both with and without a nine-car freight train, and the old reliable 415.

ITC caboose 988 carried the markers on the freight.

Charlie King gave us the actual piece of bunting which was applied to car 284 when it ran the last revenue trip on the IT. Here it is mounted on the 277.



Bob Heinlein did most of the organizational work and deserves a lot of credit for making this event run smoothly. In the evening, he gave an excellent IT slide show. He also prepared a very professional employee timetable for us to use, part of which is reproduced below. We wound up cancelling a couple of trips due to technical difficulties, but the timetable was very useful, and fun to use, too!

And here I am, trying to figure out whether we're on the advertised.

Photo by Gwyn Stupar.