New old identity

Frank writes...

My father is out of town and our family pretty much celebrated Fathers Day on Saturday. I brought my daughter out to IRM and we went for a streetcar ride and saw some of the displays, plus a visit to the Bellock Playground. That was fun but I didn't get much in the way of photos. On Sunday, I was able to come out to IRM for a longer-than-usual work day.

As I was driving on to the property, I encountered Zach running the 144. It's always nice to see this car in service.

I also ambled up to the depot, where Good Nick was running a two-car set of spam cans. This isn't unusual, but what was different was that rather than the usual lash-up of 22 and 41, this time it was 30 and 41, with the former car on the east end. It wasn't running using the bow trolleys - it was running off a jumper from the 41, like car 22 typically does - but even so it was very eye-catching. And this was one of the first times it's been in service since the bow trolleys were installed, I think. I also checked out the new bacon reefer but some of our regular contributors have promised to send photos so we'll wait on that.

As usual, I focused on the 18. I spent a while working on prepping the left (blind) side of the car for fresh grey paint. Here it is "before."

Over the front truck, you could still see the outline of the old Trolleyville herald that was applied to the car for a time in the 1960s/1970s. During that period, Brookins was lettering cars for the made-up "home road" Columbia Park & Southwestern. The CP&SW had its own herald which advertised it as the "Mobile Home Route" and had an image of a Conestoga wagon. This was applied to a number of cars but was removed from most of them after a few years, from what I can gather.

I didn't sweep the sanding dust off the side of the car before taking this picture, but here you can again see evidence of the car's previous SHRT number underneath its Trolleyville number.

I got almost half of the left side of the car sanded, but there's a section of the drop section with some rust jacking that I'd like to try and drive out with a needle chipper, so that's where I stopped until we can bring the car over to the pit where compressed air is handy. After this I also wire-wheeled some places where rust was coming through the paint and Bondo-ed a few spots with small rust holes. After sanding down the Bondo I'll be able to spot-prime and then paint this portion of the side of the car.

Another forward step was putting a coat of gloss white paint on the ceiling panels pictured last time. But photographically they don't look any different than they did last week, so I didn't bother. The next step with those will be to lay out where the holes for the light fixture and ventilators will go.

A band of rain came through (nothing like what passed through the area around 11pm though) so I took the opportunity to cut out the stencil I'd made up a couple of weeks ago. When the rain passed, it was time to head over to the 18 and change its identity.

This was gratifying. The car hasn't been the 18 since about 1961, give or take. Of course right now it's got a real split personality: of six car numbers on the thing, two say 18, two say 1218, and two are currently obliterated. But all of that will be fixed in time. Many thanks to Zach for the action shot of me "signwriting."

Hey, you! You like electric cars, right? Well, have we got an offer for you. If you come out to visit IRM on Trolley Weekend - preferably on Saturday the 3rd, when the CA&E wood cars are scheduled to run (hint: come early!) - you'll be able to run the 1630 for just $10! ...well no, not that 1630 of course. We're talking about Metra 1630, which happens to be the largest electric MU car we run by far. You'll be able to run a pair of Highliners for only $10. Such a deal! Mark your calendar now and don't miss it.