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.