Street View Sunday

Frank writes...

My big project for Sunday was to photograph the IRM streetcar line and main line for Google Street View. Earlier this year we submitted a request to Google, as you can do if you're a non-profit, for the loan of a 360-degree camera. The request was approved and the camera arrived a few weeks ago. After some testing, a nice day came along and we were all ready.

The camera car was the 415, shown here at Johnson Siding awaiting a meet with the 'L' train. My motorman was Nick Espevik, who gamely took us on a "super trip" traversing both the car line and main line.

The camera itself was about the size of a tennis ball. Google provided us with a small tripod that had a level on it, so we could keep the camera more-or-less upright, and I was able to securely tie the tripod down to the roof boards of the car. The camera emitted its own wi-fi signal, which I could log into using my phone, and the photos were uploaded directly to my account while I controlled it from a seat inside the car. Pretty slick!

Not bad, eh? I'm working on uploading all of the images from the car line and getting them knitted together into a route, at which point you'll be able to pull up IRM on Google Maps and plop yourself down anywhere along the streetcar line to take a look. In fact, it may be working already by the time you read this. Fingers crossed. Anyway, thanks to help from Dispatcher Jeff Fryman and others we had a successful round trip, including a meet at Johnson with the 1630, and returned to the station.

There didn't seem to be a huge crowd but there was a pretty nice variety of equipment running. Besides the 415, which did carry passengers on its one trip, there was the 1630 and the coach train, the 4391 on the car line, and the two electric trains shown here: CA&E 460-431 and NWERR 24 pulling trailer 1268.

By the time the 415 was put away it was already getting late in the afternoon. I wandered over to the Schroeder Store and noticed that it has acquired some nice railings and benches out front. The store has a couple of different levels of steps going out of it, which is authentic to its original configuration in Union I believe but is also something of a tripping hazard. Hence, the yellow striping.

Over in Barn 4, there has been progress (of course) on getting the end of the 1754 done and painted.

The shop was pretty busy. Joel and Richard were working on rebuilding the brake valves for Commonwealth Edison 4, which has had problems with overcharging the train. John helped with that as well. Meanwhile Zach and Brian, helped by Nick once I released him from Marketing Department service, were continuing to work on the balky main journal bearing on North Shore 251. More scraping yielded some positive results, with much less temperature rise on test trips than previously, but they also identified a new problem with some binding in the pedestal at this box. It's always something. Here Brian, Zach, and Nick take a look at the digital thermometer after a loop around the car line.

Back on the pit, Thomas spent the day doing inspection work on CTA 4412 and working to repair leaks in its door motors. It's an ongoing project to rebuild the pneumatic valves and motors on the 4000s, which were badly worn out when IRM got them and haven't seen much major work since. Thomas got the doors on one side of the car working well by the end of the day. Bill Wulfert was also around, unusual for a Sunday, working on 'L' car parts.