Historic photos from the IRM archives

Thanks to Thomas Slater, who has been going through some of the Electric Car Department archive files, we have a random assortment of photos that have turned up. These were mostly taken on the CTA during the 1950s and 1960s.

Notice: These photographs are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission.

The first three photos show a North Shore battery locomotive delivering a pair of CTA 6000s to Skokie Shops. No photographer or date is listed but it's thought these were taken c1954-1956.

Here's Met car 2865, built 1906 by Pullman and identical to 2872 and 2888 preserved at IRM, somewhere in the Loop. No photographer or date; likely late 1940s or early 1950s.

Car 3121 is an ex-Lake Street Elevated car, built by Pullman in 1894 and initially a steam-hauled trailer; like the Met car photo, no photographer or date is listed but it's likely late 1940s/early 1950s.

The next photos show CTA 2003-2004, the second pair of 2000s, at Skokie immediately after delivery in 1964. No photographer is listed.

CTA S-104 is one of two Baldwin-Westinghouse steeplecabs the "L" owned for operating freight trains on the North Side Elevated. Its sister, S-105, is preserved at IRM while S-104 is in private ownership and stored in Michigan City, Indiana. Photographer and date unknown but thought to be Skokie Shops.

Here's a photo of one of our cars: CTA 4321 is pictured on February 7, 1966 in this Ed Mizerocki photo. This car came to IRM in 1978 and is currently stored in Barn 11 if memory serves.

And then we have a series of mishap photos. Ed Mizerocki took the below photo on February 2, 1966 showing cars 4306 and 4381. The latter appears to have had a fire over the truck, possibly due to a third rail short.

Car 1779 is shown in 1951 at Wilson Shops following a fire. This car was built in 1908 by Jewett (a later series than car 1754 at IRM) and was one of the last wood cars built new for the Northwestern Elevated. Photo by Ed Mizerocki.

Well, that's embarrassing. Another Ed Mizerocki photo from 1951 shows quite an "oops" - CTA "Baldy" 4119 derailed in the Wilson yard.

The next two photos, taken on April 21, 1958, show an experimental air-conditioning unit that was fitted to the roof of CTA 6669. Both photos by Ed Mizerocki.

And the final group of photos, with no photographer listed, is a bit more sobering. These photos show the aftermath of the November 5, 1956 Wilson collision (more info here), when a train of CTA 6000s ran into the rear of a stopped train of North Shore standard cars at the Wilson Avenue platform. Eight people were killed and some 200 injured, nearly all on the "L" train, which was badly telescoped due to the much heavier construction of the North Shore train. The first two photos show the catastrophic damage to the lead CTA car, 6288, while the last two show the comparatively modest damage to the rear North Shore car of the train, Pullman 746. Car 6288 actually was put back into service, though, by the device of grafting the front end of fire-damaged car 6271 onto 6288.