Switching milestone

Frank writes...

As previously alluded to, I was out on Sunday but never even saw my father - I was helping with switching all afternoon as a ground man, mostly in the south yards.  Greg Kepka was engineer on the Army 45-tonner while Joel Ahrendt was the utility man and managed the switch lists.

It was mostly more of the same.  We pulled almost all of the equipment out of Barn 13 on the northernmost track, which is numbered 131.  Here's a pair of spam cans that came out and, later in the day, went right back in.  This pair, in the 6100-series, are in decent shape but need some control work.

There was also the Milwaukee Electric snow sweeper, the B48, which for a while was stored next to us in Barn 8.

And this is the reason that track 131 was emptied: to put this "mystery car" into the track near the west end.  It's Chicago Surface Lines 4001 (read about it here) which is going back indoors for the first time since 2010.  After this we "re-loaded" the equipment on 131 and that track was done.  Then it was on to track 132, which didn't need to be totally emptied before its next new additions were moved into the barn.

This is Terre Haute Indianapolis & Eastern 58, though I suppose you'll have to take my word for it.  It's one of three wooden interurban combine bodies we acquired around 1996 or so and it's been under one tarp or another for something like 19 years.  Before it was tarped it looked like this but there's no telling what it looks like now.  Several gallons of water drained out of the tarp when we moved it, proving again that there really is no substitute for good indoor storage.  In addition to the 58, THI&E 50 and C&LE 640 were also moved into Barn 13 and out of the weather.

And with that, filling the new barns with electric cars is just about done!  I believe that virtually all of the electric equipment that is supposed to go indoors is indoors and that most of it is in the allotted location.  There will be plenty of switching to come, as cars inevitably get moved here and there, but this is a real milestone in providing indoor storage for our historic collection.

After we were done in the south yards we towed the 144 over to the pit lead and then moved the IC Highliners about 20' further north on the connector track to facilitate movement of OTM and other large steel items in the material yard, as described in Saturday's post.  When I left at about 9:30 a crew of people including Rod, Richard, Gregg, Joel and Dan was working on putting the rebuilt compressor under the 144 as shown above.