Trolley Weekend, Day 1

This is Trolley Weekend at IRM.  Depending on how the calendar works out, we keep trying various ways of displaying our impressive collection of operating electric cars, while keeping the railroad running for people more interested in steam or other things.  We're in the middle of a heat wave, so the crowd was perhaps not as large as we would have liked, but better than I expected.  So keep reading!

First of all, we received a large shipment of goodies from a collector, now living in Minnesota, who bought these things from Wheaton Shops when the CA&E was going out of business.  There's a controller, a brake valve, a horn, reverser key, brake handle, a complete first aid box, paper items, and lots more.  I can't tell you how much we appreciate donations like this.  And I'm told his wife appreciates getting all this stuff out of the house, but that's another matter.

Anyway, they got a pass to ride the trains all day, and he got to operate the CA&E cars for a while.  So if you happen to have a collection of railroad parts something like this, have we got a deal for you!

The theme for this weekend was that everything operating would be at least one hundred years old.  That means all the CA&E wood cars qualify, and today we were running the 36 and 309, seen here.

The 308 and 319 should be running tomorrow.  They were parked on the connector for the day.

With all four cars out of the barn, I should have been able to get a good picture of the Lake Shore Electric 150.  But some bozo left this stupid platform in the way.

Another big star of the show was the three-car IT train.

The 277 sports the antimacassars my wife made for us many years ago.

And here's our crew for the CA&E train:  Frank, Nick Espevik, and me.  It was hot, but a good time was had by all.

Frank brought out his portable wind-up 78 RPM record player to provide us with music from WWI:

All these trains were transporting people a hundred years ago, when this music was popular.

Since I was busy, I didn't have a chance to get a picture of the other trains running: North Shore 160, Charles City 300 pulling the North Shore 604, and so on.  But at least here's a picture of the Matchbox in the capable hands of the Buck brothers:

Stay tuned for our next installment!