Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is the real start of our main operating season, and everything seems to have gone very well, in spite of the (not unusual) imperfect weather.  Saturday was very well attended.  My wife and I showed up for the Zephyr dinner train, and I'll post about that later.  Today (Monday) started out with some heavy rain, but it cleared up quickly and we had a much better crowd than I had feared.  We had a lot of trains operating: CA&E 308 and 319, the Zephyr, the 1630, two CTA 4000's, and the CTA 2200's in shuttle service to Jefferson St.   And the 4391 and 3142 on the car line.  What more could you ask?

The 319 with its new roof was in service for the first time since 2013.  And not even any dewirements!  However, since I was the conductor, I had some time to look around, and came up with a list of minor items to fix, such as missing ticket clips and things like that.  But no major problems.

The 308 is sporting our nice 48-star flags.  Jeff Obarek was the motorman and Joel Ahrendt was the trainman, and we worked together efficiently.   Sorry, no picture of the crew mugging for the camera this time. 

Of course, the steam engine is always a major attraction.  I'm usually too busy to get a picture when there's a bigger crowd around, but it was certainly popular.  And then of course there was the Zephyr too!

 And then my old friend Ray Cook showed up; here he is talking to Nick during a trip on the 319.  He finally retired after 49 years of running trains for the IC, Metra, etc.  mostly on the electric division.  It was great to be able to talk to him.