Saturday of Showcase Weekend was a great success, and a good time was had by all. We posted some pictures earlier taken by Chuck Amstein, and here are mine.
Cars 36 and 309 were running, and we were nearly full on most trips. That's always good to see. The blue cars performed flawlessly; not even any dewirements that I can recall.
Here's our crew: myself as trainman, Frank was the regular motorman, and Jack Rzepecki the conductor. We had a couple of guest motormen. So here are some pictures of the nearly-full 36 on several trips.
With Frank as motorman.
On the next trip, Bob Opal was piloting a guest of his, an official with the STB.
With Andy Sunderland as motorman.
CCW 300 was pulling the caboose train for much of the day.
One of those odd situations you see only at IRM. The Rock Island Geep is waiting for the CA&E train to leave on a trip so it can return to Yard 2.
It's nice and peaceful, but not for long. We kept running on the hour.
Four North Shore cars on display at 50th. This train did not actually operate.
Then we had a visit from Joe and Gwen Stupar, with their daughter.
Then the usual barbeque supper, which is always great, and the 1630 blew out the 100 candles on its birthday cake, as seen in Chuck's album. And as it got dark, Frank and I took the Matchbox for several trips around the car line. It was a lot of fun.
There were lots of photographers around all day and into the night. Many of them were equipped with tripods so their night-time photos are undoubtedly better than mine. Sorry, I can do only so many things at once. Often a maximum of one.
3 comments:
I look forward to seeing a 4 car CNS&M train on one side of the 50th St. platform and the Electroliner on the opposite side. You could sort of pretend that you are again at 6th and Michigan at the Milwaukee terminal. Out of curiosity, can you actually run a 4 or 5 car NS train without bringing down the substation?
C Kronenwetter
Yes, at least a four-car North Shore train can be run without dropping the sub, and probably more. But some of the cars are temporarily out of service because we are trying to adopt higher standards for wheel profiles, bearings, and things like that. But you're right, once the Electroliner is put back together it would make a stunning display.
We later added 251 to the North Shore train at 50th Ave and put markers on the 251 and headlight on the 160 at the south end. Zach and I dug out the 5 car train for photos with the newly lit station and the 4000s and we later ran the 749 on a mainline trip after putting 251, 757 and 714 away. All 5 cars moved themselves to and from 50th Avenue Station.
I'm told being careful when accelerating will allow a 5 car NSL train to operate without the substation becoming unhappy.
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