Chicago Day

Chicago Day is a long-standing tradition at IRM, commemorating (or mourning) the end of streetcar service on June 21, 1958.  (And when I joined, it wasn't all that long ago.)  So all of our electric cars, at least, used in service today operated in Chicago.   The CA&E wood cars were supposed to run, but the weather in the morning was raining and looked threatening, so the North Shore train ran instead.  This probably also depressed our ridership for the day, but a good time was had by all nonetheless.

Here's the North Shore train, 749 and 714:

The North Shore crew were Chris and Dan Buck.  And for the CA&E, 409 and 460:

The crew were Ron Seavers and Dennis Matl, assisted occasionally by myself.

No crew pictures.  Yikes, I promise this won't happen again.  But to continue:

Interior of the 409:

And the 460, which doesn't operate very often:

And the CTA 6000's were running out of 50th Avenue:

And finally, the Matchbox -- what could say "Chicago" better than this?

Operated by Bill Thiel and Randy Allegrezza.

And the steam train was operating also:

The RPO was dropping off and picking up mail on the fly, although I didn't get a chance to show this in action.  But that's why it's called the Frisco Fast Mail:

In other news, Tim Peters survived another serious bicycle accident earlier this week, with three broken ribs and a broken arm.  But you can't keep a good man down, so here he is today stripping paint from the 1754 using chemical stripper and a left-handed chisel.  He admitted this wasn't very productive, though, and spent part of the day just sitting around and talking, like anybody else.

Work continues on rebuilding the Cleveland PCC:

And Jack Biesterfeld is making good progress stripping paint from the interior of the Green Bay car:

I happened upon this when I went over to Barn 11 to look in the 321 for some canvas paint.  Jack was discussing the restoration of this car with Paul Cronin, our new General Manager.  Paul has taken on a lot of responsibilities, and I'm sure he'll do a good job.

Remember that Day Out With Thomas is coming up sooner than usual:  July 8 and 9, 15 and 16.  You won't want to miss it!