Best laid plans

Frank writes...

Today was spent working on Shaker Heights 18, both directly and indirectly. When I arrived, I went over to Barn 13 and measured the ceiling panel that was removed from the car last week. It turned out to be 63-1/2" x 113-3/8", or a bit over 5' wide and a bit over 9' long. So that will be fun to source a replacement for. I also swept up the rear half of the car with the results shown below.

You'll note that the second-to-last seat on the blind side (on the right side of the photo) is missing the wooden handle over the seat back; I replaced it with one from a spare seat back at the end of the day. The white trip pieces atop the seats are lap strips which cover the edges of the ceiling panels and hold the panels in place; these ones are from the panel which was removed by Trolleyville.

Then came the interesting part: working on the 18 indirectly through the device of a multi-part switch move. The goal was to swap the 18 with Detroit Street Railway 3865, which has been in Barn 7 since it came to IRM back in 1998. A bit of history of car 3865 can be found here; suffice to say that while it makes a very nice display piece, it is nowhere close to operating due to an advanced state of disassembly of both interior and electrical components. As such, it was a good candidate to go into storage in Barn 13 so that car 18 can go into Barn 7 were it is under wire. The first part of the switch move was to extract the 3865, located fifth from the door on track 73. First out were two cars that moved under their own power, CTA 4391 and CSL 1374.

Behind those came Shaker Heights 63, which was originally built for the Twin Cities and is currently down with a blown MG set. At this point the Army 45-tonner entered the picture to move the dead cars.

And then came an exciting moment for me, at least: the final car blocking in the 3865 was Indiana Railroad 205, which hadn't seen the sun since the completion of its paint job about two years ago. With the 45-tonner out of sight, she could almost be pulling into Barn 7 under her own power here.

Not bad for a 50-foot piece of iron oxide with a face only a mother could love.

After that came the 3865. This move was made gingerly because the Detroit car has streetcar wheels with narrow treads, so it's liable to derail on switches or in spots with slightly wide gauge. The decision was made to move it down to Barn 13 but it soon became clear that the brakes were binding up on curves. The culprits were the slack adjusters on that truck; pins had to be removed to free those up and that took some time. But eventually the car was back on the move. Here it is saying farewell to Yard 7.

It was pushed down the connector and onto the Yard 15 lead. It's distinctly possible that this is the furthest the car has rolled at one time since it left service with Detroit Street Railway! It has never traveled far at IRM; as far as we know it was unloaded in 1998 at the throat to Yard 7 and immediately went into the barn. Before we got it, it went straight from DSR to the Henry Ford Museum, which doesn't have any traction operation so it presumably didn't really go anywhere at all while there. Who knows? Anyway, it was posed "with the pole up" on the lead to Yard 15 which someday will be part of the extended streetcar line.

And now we get to that "best laid plans" part. We intended to switch the 18 out and put the 3865 into Barn 13 in its place, but someone had put a padlock on the switch to the track we wanted. This is unusual to see at IRM but certainly communicates that the track is a no-go. So the 3865 was temporarily placed in Barn 13 on another track and the 18 was left where it sits until its track is accessible. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

Many thanks to all of the Car Department people who worked on this switch move: Joel A, Nick E, Jeron G, Greg K, Richard S, and Thomas S helped running the engine, as ground men, and in working to free up the 3865's brakes. The switch move finished with putting the 205 back into Barn 7 (it is now one spot further west, where it will stay for the foreseeable future) followed by the 63, the 1374, and the 4391. At some point the 18 will be placed between the 63 and the Matchbox.

There were other exciting things happening as well. Thomas was working on the interior of the 4410, whose ceiling now has a coat of primer, and later he ran the 1797 over to the pit and returned it to Barn 6 towing trailer 1268. The 1268 still has one cab out of service pending reinstallation of the control wiring conduit, but the pit will be needed this week for annual inspection of the 3142. Meanwhile Nick was working on adjusting the J-governor for the 4410 as shown below.

Other projects were seeing progress too. Doodlebug Bob was working on machining parts for something (I'm not certain what); Norm and Jeff were working on installing steel framing on the front end of the Michigan car; Joel was working on more shop cleanup and sorting; and Shelby was working on sorting and cataloging the Car Department's collection of technical drawings and documents. Joel also showed me the below map, drawn in 1975, which arrived this week:

The O'Hare line is shown extending only to Jefferson Park while I-355 doesn't exist, only an exit off of I-290 ending at Lake Street. There are also references to both CR and PC trackage heading east out of Chicago. And then there's the below poster, which was rescued from car 18 and may find its way onto a wall somewhere at IRM.

It's easy to forget but Trolleyville USA ceased to exist, for all intents and purposes, in 2006 when the cars were moved from North Olmsted and the track and wire removed. From then until the collection was liquidated in late 2009 it was called the Lake Shore Electric Railway, the founding of which this poster commemorates, and that organization's goal was the creation of a publicly-funded traction museum on the Cleveland lakefront. In 2006 that seemed attainable; three years later, with the economy much worse, it didn't and the collection was sold off. The best laid plans, indeed.