In Memoriam Gregory Stepanek

 With sadness we must report the death of Greg Stepanek, who was a long-time member of the Museum and a good friend to everyone who knew him.  He will certainly be missed.

Here's a link to the obituary.

Service details:

Visitation: Friday, September 3, 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and Saturday,

Sept. 4, 9:00 a.m. until time of services at 10:00 a.m. at

Ivins/Moravecek Funeral Home, 80 E. Burlington St., Riverside

Funeral Mass: Saturday, Sept. 4, 11:00 a.m. St. Edmund Church, Oak Park

Interment: Following Mass, Queen of Heaven Cemetery, Hillside

Weekday Operation

This certainly isn't as exciting as the Electroliner, but our North Shore fleet has always been an integral part of the Museum.  I usually haven't been an operator for weekday operations, but Fred Zimmerman twisted my arm like a pro wrestler until I agreed to be a motorman on Monday.  And it was a lot of fun.  The 749 is really a great car, enjoyable to operate, and it all went well.

This is nearing the end of the summer season, and school children are back in school, so ridership was relatively low, but we still had a good number of passengers.  And it's a lot more relaxing than weekend operations.  Since I'm the dispatcher, it's not hard to remember the orders I give myself:  "Regular trip, no meets."   And it's always good to have a competent conductor on hand.  Here we have the crew shot, as always: Jeff Fryman and me.  You will notice that we observe social distancing.

And with the hourly schedule, I had some time between runs to look at the depot, for instance, which I haven't done for a long time.  The waiting room at the west end of the building was the Museum's bookstore and gift shop when I joined back in 1974.  It's now correctly set up as a waiting room, and the walls are decorated with an excellent selection of North Shore photographs, which seemed quite appropriate today.

This display case has been in the depot since I joined, as well as most of the items on display.

For instance, one thing I'm sure has been there since 1974 is this newspaper item "The Good Old Days".  (Of course, I'm shooting through the glass and the reflections are a problem...)  One of the things you could do in the good old days was to lie on the side of a hill and watch an interurban car go by.  I'm glad to see it's still there!

Meanwhile, other people are hard at work on their appointed rounds.  Wes Lloyd seems to spend most of his summer mowing the many acres of grass on campus.  He's a better man than I am.  He also helped us pull one of the retrievers out of retrieve, which was quite a struggle.  Maybe I should file a complaint.

And in other news, it appears that John is making good progress on bending molding strips for the 306.

And Tim continues work on the 50th Avenue station.  The window casings have been installed:

And the display case has a fresh coat of varnish.  You'll have to take his word for it, I guess.

So that was quite enjoyable.  Maybe I should do this more often.

The 'Liner Lives

Frank writes...

Sunday was an eventful day, to say the least. It was the first time in probably close to 25 years that I'd seen the Electroliner run.

I spent the afternoon helping Nick work on the train; more on that later. But first, the fun stuff! As the sun started to set, work on the train ended for the day and it was time to take it for a trip around the streetcar loop to check clearances, hoses, etc on the ruling curve. This provided the chance to go for a short ride on the train and to get some pretty decent photos. The bottom shot shows Zach in the cab.

It was a warm day and some bands of rain passed through early in the afternoon, but by dusk the sky was clear and the train was present for a very nice sunset. It's really exciting to see the train back in operation for the first time in more than 20 years. There are plenty of minor issues that will need attention over time, and of course there's a lot of interior work still underway, but the train definitely runs.

Rewinding a bit, when I arrived in the early afternoon, Nick was working on checking some items off of the Electroliner's to-do list. First I assisted a bit in draining and refilling the #1 air compressor, then it was on to installing a cut-out switch on the battery box.

The switch can be seen here on the right side of the box with the long cable hanging out of it. While not original, this allows the batteries to be isolated with a single switch when the train isn't running. The alternatives to that are either 1) draining the batteries with the various battery-powered circuits on the train, or 2) manually opening the battery box and pulling out the fuse every time the train is put away. On the North Shore, the train would very seldom have been "dead" so this wasn't much of an issue. Anyway, this job was accomplished in time for the evening test trip. In the meantime Zach was repairing some minor air leaks. And that was pretty much it; Joel was doing various department chores, including switching cars, while Doodlebug Bob was working on machining more components for the journal wedge fixture. The 309-319 were scheduled for service; Larry brought them out and got one main line trip in but had to put them away because of the approaching rain.

As a final note, when I was last out (over a month ago!) I had a plywood ceiling panel for Shaker Heights 18 on hand, painted with a fresh coat of white paint and ready to cut down to size. It seems to have been misplaced, though this similar-but-unpainted piece of plywood is still present in the corner of the shop. I suspect that it got moved to somewhere that it wasn't out of the way, I'm just not sure where. Has anybody seen my ceiling panel?

Warm Weather at West Wheaton

Saturday was pretty warm, but we managed to live through it.  Main-line service was provided by two CA&E trains:  wood cars 309 and 319, and steel cars 409 and 431.  Much like Wheaton back in the good old days.

And then the paralleling steam road service was provided by the Decapod, in the absence of any North Western steam locomotive in our collection.

And there was streetcar service too, of course.

And here's our obligatory crew picture:  motorman Larry Stone, myself, and conductor Matt Kalnins, whom I hadn't met before.  Operations went smoothly.  Zach was the dispatcher and did very well.

The first couple of trips had a good number of passengers.  Later in the day it was quite hot, and ridership fell off as a result.

Among other things, I got a chance to talk to a group of railfans from India, who were interested in all aspects of the car's operation, things like voltages and horsepower, the typical length of interurban routes, all my favorite subjects.

Of course, back in the shop various projects continued as usual.  Here Ed Woytula is needle-chipping a truck frame for the Cleveland PCC.

And B&G guys were scraping and repainting the Depot St. canopy.   Maintenance never ends.

Help Wanted

Help!  The CA&E wood cars (309 and 319) are scheduled to operate this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, and we need a trainman for both days.   You do not need to be rules qualified.  This is an amazing opportunity you don't get very often, so please sign up now if you can.   Thanks!!!

Resistance is Futile

As we have mentioned, our current priority is fixing the headlight resistor system in the 319.  After some effort, I decided that trying to patch up defective resistors wasn't going to work, so the next step is to remove them and try using new resistors of an improved design.   As a philosophical principle, we try to use original fabric whenever possible, but when it comes to high-voltage electrical systems, we have to be practical.  If the headlight resistors fail, operating at night is futile.  Or at least dangerous and illegal. 

After removing the front plate and all of the old wire-wound resistors, the box looks like this:

You shall, of course, observe that the back plate has a large hole rusted out of it.  That improves the air circulation, I suppose, but it can be eventually fixed by tack welding.  (That's far outside my skill set, but we have plenty of people with the necessary expertise.)  And I took measurements so that new resistors can be attached to a separate metal plate and then inserted into the circuit.

The front panel was in better shape, so I cleaned it up, and repainted it in the shop.

Meanwhile, I haven't seen most of the regulars for a week or two, but they're continuing on their tasks.  Here we see a part of the progress on the 306.

I spent part of the day in a meeting, more about that later.

Finally, the 749 was providing revenue service.

The crew were Gregg Wolfersheim and Jeff Fryman.

I wish now I had thought of recreating this scene from 50 years ago a little better:

Same motorman, same railroad, different car.  And as a matter of fact, Gregg has held up a lot better than the 154.

Friday Report

 Once again, this will be brief.

I spent some time trying to fix the defective resistors on the 319, but finally decided this just wasn't going to be reliable enough.  We will probably be able to buy new resistors that will work much better, and we're working on that now.

In any case, we won't be needing the 36 for the rest of the season, so we decided to switch it out of the train.   Since its compressor isn't working, it puts a load on the other two compressors.

The 319 is posed in Yard 8 while the 409 comes out for revenue service.  Just like Wheaton!

And I got a chance to visit the model railroad part of the MPB, as some painters were finishing up in the room.  I wanted a better image of the big photograph of the old Coleman factory on Halsted:

Of course, it would be better without those boxes piled in front of it.

The Museum has managed to collect a large assortment of model trains over the past few years, and it will take a lot of work to sort it all out.

Quick Update

Today's report will be brief, as I didn't have much time available.  I spent a couple of hours helping some friends of the Museum with access to some of our historic documents for a research project, and did some cleaning and straightening in the 453 and 321.  But let's see what else was going on today.

Tim continues to work on the interior of the 50th Avenue station.  The ticket booth is being completed:

and he's attaching the baseboards:

He also pointed out the new end posts for the 2872, which arrived yesterday from a lumber mill in Michigan that specializes in projects like this.  We don't have the tools to make posts this size.

Meanwhile, revenue service was being provided by Ron Seavers on the 409.

And there was switching going on.  This particular string is all Milwaukee Road.

And I stopped in briefly to check on progress inside the Electroliner.  It looks great!

The dining car is awaiting the new floor.

By the way, remember to stop in at the Used Book Store on Central.

They've probably got something you want!

The other day we happened to stop at the antique village in Lockport.  I hadn't been there for a while, and the Symington depot looks much better now, and is being well maintained:

The track in front of it is just a short section, about 100' long.   They have several other historic buildings:

And something that IRM could really use: a calaboose!