A few weeks ago somebody suggested listing "ones that got away." That's actually not a bad idea. Times being what they are, we don't have much current news to report, so we might as well talk about the past....
If we're discussing equipment that just barely missed being preserved, one of the first things that occurs to me would be the North Shore wooden passenger cars. The North Shore had a nice selection of wooden equipment in its early years, but due to replacement by the great steel fleet, and a severe drop in business during the Depression, the wooden interurban cars were removed from passenger service by about 1935. This was before the railway museum movement got started, but still there were three separate opportunities to preserve at least one wooden car. These went from good to fair to wretched, but sadly they all failed.
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| 300 at North Chicago - Mewhinney |
The first opportunity was coach 300, which had been relegated to sleet scraper duty but was otherwise unchanged. About 1938 it was offered to the CERA to use as a business car and occasional fantrip vehicle. It was repainted and relettered, but otherwise kept in original condition. It was used on several North Shore fantrips until the start of WWII. Pictures of it at this time are plentiful.
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| 300 fantrip in Waukegan - Mewhinney |
But when the war started and most of its members went into the service, the CERA was no longer able to take care of the 300, and the railroad found a different use for it in the wartime rush. It became a locker room for the female train employees for a while. It was later vandalized and deteriorated rapidly, and was stored out of use. At the end of the war the car was in bad shape, and the CERA evidently felt unable to restore or maintain it. In 1945, I suppose nobody yet realized just how much volunteers could accomplish. The body was used as a diner for a couple of years, then scrapped.
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| Car 137 in service - Johnson |
Opportunity #2 was a group of twelve North Shore cars that had been leased to the CA&E back in 1937. At Wheaton they were heavily modified. The couplers were raised, the hot water systems were changed to electric heat, bus jumpers were installed, the sanders were removed, the control system was modified, and so on. They operated on the CA&E until September 1953, when service was cut back to Forest Park and they became surplus. Although they had been greatly changed, most of them were at least still complete and serviceable, but no one seems to have tried to preserve one at that time. IERM acquired its first car in December 1953, and that was sufficient for the first two years or so. So all twelve ex-North Shore cars went to scrap in 1954. This was not as good an opportunity as the first, but still entirely feasible, if perhaps the timing had been different.
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| Car 137 on the scrap line - Johnson |
The final opportunity was even more problematic than the others. Car 202 was built in 1909 as a combine, but it lasted in this service only about seven years, until the first steel combines arrived. It was then rebuilt into an MD car by removing the seats and installing additional baggage doors at the #2 end. It remained in occasional MD service until after the war, by which time it was rather deteriorated. Frank Sherwin acquired it and used it for storage at the foundry.
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| 202 at North Chicago in 1959 - Mizerocki |
The decrepit body was later used by IERM, as seen above. In 1964, it was moved by truck to the new property at Union, where it sat in what is now Yard 5 for many years. It was partly repainted, but continued to deteriorate.
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| 202 at Union - Schmidt |
Finally, on the point of collapse, it was scrapped in early 1974, the last North Shore wooden passenger car in existence, although a rather miserable existence at that. But you can't win them all.
Well, I hope that wasn't too depressing. We all know this is a very challenging business, and the successes far outweigh the failures. Suggestions for further installments are welcome!
Well, I hope that wasn't too depressing. We all know this is a very challenging business, and the successes far outweigh the failures. Suggestions for further installments are welcome!
12 comments:
Randy,
In my early days as a teen-aged member of IERM, I believe I wrote to museum leaders pleading that they try to save an Illinois Terminal streamliner and/or one of their double-end PCC's. Both were still in existence at the time. If my memory serves me correctly, John Horacek wrote me back to tell me that these items were out of the price range of the museum. I wish I still had copies of this correspondence. I especially miss those PCC's, one of which would be a perfect weekday car for our present operations. Perhaps you can uncover further information about our Illinois Terminal "ones that got away".
Dan Buck
We could have saved a few IT streamliner cars from the scrap yard in East St Louis in the early 1980s, but that opportunity was lost as well.
I believe the West Towns offered the cars used during the final CERA fan trip, or at least the line car. The story I was told was that Krambles said no, and the car was lit afire for the fans to take pictures of it. Sad, if it is a true story.
O. Anderson
As sad as the scrapping of the Milwaukee 600 streetcar and the loss of the Kansas City Birney during the destruction of Speedrail...
C Kronenwetter
I am pleased to see you took up my suggestion, Randall. Thank you, and I would love to see further installments of this if you or anybody else get more ideas or remember other interurban cars or what-have-you that didn't quite make it into the museum collection.
Sadly, it very much is the case that you can't win 'em all. But it is fascinating and fun to speculate on the what-could-have-been or what-almost-was. I have no doubt in my mind that the Illinois Railway Museum is far from being the only museum that could tell stories about "the ones that got away". But you are absolutely right, the success stories far outweigh the failures, and it's the volunteers who are dedicated to this hobby who make these success stories happen.
-Matt Maloy
The ones that got away are something, but what is really sad is the ones that are actually part of a museum and still got away. In the early days of the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association, two cars were burned by vandals. Now that is sad!
Ted Miles, IRM Member among others
I disagree, Ted. Losing cars over the years to rust and rot, which happens much more often, is sad. Losing cars to vandalism is infuriating.
The Speedrail fleet was scrapped in 1952-53. Could have been possible to get some equipment. Streetcar 882 lasted into the 60s in service, another missed opportunity..
There are two North Shore in grave danger of being scrapped in Connecticut (710 168), will this be a missed opportunity or are we still junking the North Shore in 2020?
Randy
Regarding Speedrail, I remember hearing about a visit by and IRM faction including Bob Bruneau, to Jay Maeder's house in Ohio. They looked at the TM interurban (1111?) that he had moved there, but its condition was worse than any of the IRM fleet. Somehow or sometime, that car was scrapped, but I do not know if any of the parts went to IRM.
Jay was clearly a railfan, and there are photos of a collection of cars he had in Milwaukee on Speedrail, including that Birney, which I am sure everyone thought would become some kind of transit museum. I think they were stored on the never built subway leads.
The sad thing is, Bob said that we should have saved Jay's car, because its condition was much better than many of the bodies brought in from Indiana and elsewhere in the 1980s and 90s.
I don't know if IRM ever wanted to get cars from the Fort Dodge Line. Perhaps they did, a lot of people went out to visit it from Chicago. It was scrapped so fast, I imagine there was not much of a chance, with poor communications in those days.
O. Anderson
The story goes that the movers didn't understand that Jay Maeder wanted the complete car, so they delivered only the body, and the trucks and motors went to scrap. That was still before the museum movement really got started. The same is true of the Fort Dodge line, I think -- the timing was just off.
Regarding the Fort Dodge Interurbans, my father Ron Sims has told me that one car did survive as a MofW bunk car at Fraser into the 60's, and I believe it was looked at for preservation, but the C&NW wanted either $500 or $1000 for it, and they (Iowa NRHS?) couldn't raise the money to save it. The price seems like a pittance now, but my dad reminded me how much that actually was to a working man back then.
Mark Sims
That's interesting. I can only imagine that after bunk car service it was in pretty rough shape, but I've always thought those big Niles combines were a very impressive design.
IRM did not save the two electric locomotives that were at the shuttered coke refinery on the south side of Milwaukee, which were extant into the mid 1990s. I think that the trucks might have been acquired, as they were some sort of IT hand me downs and a useful type for the collection.
There also was a narrow gauge mining railroad in northern Wisconsin or the UP of Michigan, I think. IRM did not save any equipment from that, but I think there was quite a bit of overhead wire and fittings acquired circa mid 1980s.
Too bad nobody saved any of the E&B equipment that was lying around. Trolley museums were being formed in the East at the time of the opportunity. I wonder how many missed opportunities passed as hopes and wishes, before a contingent of individuals with enough combined energy were able to save these things?
I think you could add the North Shore Line and the Chicago Aurora and Elgin both as missed preservation opportunities. Organizations were formed and made efforts, but the political will and individual responsiveness was not strong enough versus corporate shuffling.
O. Anderson
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