Tales of How They Got Away

Our friend Dick Lukin, one of the longest-term members of the Museum, sent us these wonderful recollections on CSL cars that didn't get saved:  

 I was active at IERM and IRM in the late 50's and early 60's and the status of the North Shore 202 was an issue.  The car body was just a pile of kindling... in the opinion of most of us!  A major  policy at IRM at the time was to NEVER acquire a car unless it was  complete... i.e. weatherproof,  with good motors, etc, etc.  Naturally some cars did come less than perfect.

   

Typical CSL Sedan (Volkmer - Mewhinney)

The thinking of the Board at that time was that IRM was a museum for INTERURBAN cars, and streetcars were not of primary interest.  (I personally was against this thinking.)  In the middle and late 1950s when the CTA was burning cars like crazy at 77th, we at  IRM really missed out on many significant Chicago cars.  For instance, CTA had remodeled a group of Sedans from two man to one man configuration for use on 63rd.  The aldermen along 63rd raised all kinds of hell and wanted NO one-man cars.  CTA said OK, so they got one man buses instead.  All of the refurbished Sedans were promptly shoved out to the burn track, and so we missed out on a Sedan.

5651 (Don Ross)

A few years later one evening, while showing slides, we noticed that on the "ready to burn" track  at 77th street shops there was the ONLY remaining car of the 5651 series.  None of us knew that the car even existed, and we wondered where the car had been living all those years, unknown to any one.

"Out to Pasture" area at 77th Street Station (Bowlan - Mewhinney)

Also at 77th street shops, on the north side of the paint shop, there was a STEPHENSON single truck body!  That body was used as a change-up room for the paint shop crew to hang their clothing.  Al Williams and I "liberated" the cast brass builders plates and the bells, indeed at midnight in about 1958.  I have one builder's plate right here on my desk, and one of the bells is at the museum!

Al Williams and I both lived on the south side of Chicago, he  in Englewood in a huge old house, and I in South Shore.  He could use his dad's Ford, so we used to go to CTA South Shops (yes, nearly midnight) and "liberate" select car parts from cars awaiting the torch.

Please note especially the two destination sign boxes at each end of 3142 and the route sign boxes. All four items were liberated in one night's mission along with many other items of interest.  The sign boxes were stored in my garage in South Shore until the early 1960s along with a panel truck load of other "goodies".  Eventually even the panel truck was donated to the museum.  It showed up in a few Rail and Wire issues! 

We missed out on any one man MU cars, and while we have the 144, we are missing a 500 high-speed from Milwaukee Ave., some of which ran  on Ashland before going up in smoke!

Yep, we missed out a some nice stuff, but I'm grateful for what we do have and the fantastic results that all of our hard work and money produced. 

  Dick Lukin