A Really Big Show

I'll cover both July 3rd and July 4th in my post; I'm sure that my father will chime in with more photos and info on happenings on the 4th. Suffice to say, everything went off swimmingly!

The weather was terrific both days. On the 3rd, we put together the three-car wood train with a full crew, as shown in the previous post. We ran one revenue trip before lunchtime then followed it up with the abandonment reenactment trip at about noon. Below right, the line-up on Station Track 1 before the reenactment trip included five CA&E cars - quite a sight!









We ran a couple more trips after this. The crowds on Sunday were depressingly small; on no trip did we have more than maybe 40-50 people on the entire train. Assigned to run the "clean-up" trip at 5pm, we elected to mix things up a bit and broke the train (i.e. uncoupled) there in the station, just like they would do dozens of times a day at Wheaton. Motorman Joel and conductor Ron departed on the final trip (below), after which my father and I ran the blue cars back to Barn 8. When the 319 returned to the barn we made the train back up in preparation for...

The Big Event

July 4th was the largest trolley pageant IRM has ever put on, and by a good margin too. The weather was outstanding: hardly a cloud in the sky and low 80's. I picked up David Wilkins at O'Hare in the morning and we drove out, arriving at about 9am to witness staging activities already well along due largely to the efforts of Rod Turner and Joel Ahrendt, assisted by Joe Stupar, Greg Kepka and many others. Our assignment for the day was Veracruz 19. Below left, cars wait in Barn 8 to emerge for staging; below right, our plucky streetcar.









We were staged at the north end of the 50th Avenue west track, right next to - as it turned out - the CA&E wood cars, which were staged on the east track. Joining us in the 50th Avenue area during the staging period were the Sand Springs car, CSL 1374 and 144, the New York subway cars, "TM" L7 and the Broad Street subway car.
The 19 is single-ended, but David and I quickly got the routine of swinging the pole around and moving the retriever from back to front for back-up moves down to a science. Shortly before 1pm we were sent out to the eastbound main alongside the parking lot, and the pageant started just around 1:10pm. We were probably the 15th or 16th move, so we got to see a lot of neat stuff go past us including an impressive run-by of the three-car CA&E steel train to lead off the pageant. Car 460, in the lead, flew black flags in memory of the late Julie Johnson, whose donations made possible the acquisition of our ex-Trolleyville cars, including Veracruz 19.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures during the pageant and didn't take many afterwards,
but hopefully we'll be able to post more photos taken by others soon. I'd also recommend checking out the IRM webcam time-lapse at http://www2.irm.org/cam/timelapse.html (you may have to select 7-4-11 in the date box) - it is truly amazing how much activity took place over the course of the day. For a good eight hours there was hardly a minute when two or more trains weren't in motion, and a tremendous amount of credit is due to the dispatchers who made it all work: Joel Ahrendt, car line dispatcher; Adam Robillard, main line dispatcher; and Jamie Kolanowski, who dispatched the pageant. Rod Turner was unflagging in his efforts to get everything ready beforehand and put everything away afterwards, and literally dozens of volunteers made the whole thing possible by crewing all of the trains for the day.

After the parade we ran the 19 for several revenue trips before spotting it in front of Barn 4 to take a break. At about 4pm we ran it for a few more trips and then put it away. The crowd for the day seemed good, and the ever-popular open car was always full. Overall it was a terrific day and a great success for IRM and for the Electric Car Department.