Howard Odinius was a motorman on the North Shore Line. He spent most of his vacation time traveling around the Midwest visiting other interurban lines. And much of his spare time was spent making detailed models of interurban cars. His favorite type seems to have been the Indiana Railroad lightweight high-speed cars of 1931, so when one of these became the last operating survivor of the once-great system....
Well, you probably know the rest of the story. Howard went to work and that car eventually became the nucleus of the Illinois Railway Museum. It doesn't operate very often, but on Saturday it ran all day, allowing the public to ride its newly-reupholstered seats in comfort and style.
(All photographs by Chuck Amstein. May not be reproduced without permission, etc.)
(R) I got bumped from the CA&E, but luckily the Indiana was hiring.
This may not look correct, but it is. Jon looked it up in the Indiana Railroad rulebook. The rear of a train is marked by green flags by day and red lights by night.
The car also showed off its melodious brass air horns. They are loud.
On most trips we had to turn away passengers when the car was full. Luckily I did not have to turn away these two.
The car stops at a rural grade crossing to board or discharge passengers.
Modern automatic block signals provide absolute safety for high-speed movements on single track lines.
Jon's next big ambition is to recreate the C&LE's famous race with an airplane. We could always put some parlor car seats in the baggage section. Now we just need to find somebody who has an extremely slow biplane. Let us know!
And of course there were many other things going on.
Thanks, Chuck!
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