History of Chicago Surface Lines 9020

Chicago Surface Lines 9020

and Streetcar Trailers in Chicago

by Frank Hicks

For decades, the Chicago Surface Lines – the country’s largest single street railway system – rostered more than 3,000 streetcars. By the 1920s, nearly all of these cars were double-truck cars with either two or four motors. The largest exception was a group of 108 unpowered double-truck cars known as trailers. The trailers were built between 1920 and 1923 and saw use on a handful of the most heavily patronized lines in the city, but in the end their unwieldy operating characteristics and reduced ridership during the Depression combined to take them all out of active service after less than a decade. One trailer, car 9020, has survived to the present day after serving for several decades as a storage locker. Today it is on public display in Barn 7 at IRM.

This article was written using materials compiled by James Buckley and bequeathed to IRM by the late Roy Benedict. Thanks go to Art Peterson, Ray Piesciuk, David Sadowski, Bill Shapotkin, and Bruce Wells for providing photographs.

Headline image: CSL trailer 9020 is shown sometime around 1925 signed for Halsted Street with car 6159, a Brill-built 169-series car, in the lead. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

Streetcar Trailers

Street railway technology advanced quickly during the early 20th century. Following the explosion in the popularity of electric railways during the early 1890s, technology advanced to embrace larger double-truck streetcars by the turn of the century, Pay-As-You-Enter (PAYE) fare collection by 1910, and steel construction by the late teens. Not all innovations were successful, with some becoming relatively short-lived fads. One of these less-than-successful developments was the streetcar trailer.

Many systems had towed old horsecars or cable car trailers behind their streetcars on a limited basis in the 1890s, but by 1910 that practice had largely ended. However, operation of modern trailers began to appear around 1912 in a handful of cities, Cleveland and Pittsburgh being among the early adopters. Cleveland in particular had a street railway system that was hamstrung by unusually low fares imposed by city ordinance, so efforts were made to cut operating costs in any way possible. Trailer operation was one method: a motor car towing a trailer carried as many people as two motor cars but required only three crewmen instead of the four that two motor cars would require. Additional cost savings could be found in the cheaper construction of the trailer cars. Cleveland ordered trailers by the hundreds in the mid-teens, and, unlike other cities, found enough success with them that they stayed in use for some four decades.

Sometime in the mid-1920s, the CSL photographer captured the ideal of the streetcar trailer train at West Shops: PAYE motor car 1721, homebuilt in 1923 and designed for trailer pulling, with matching center-entrance trailer 9032, built by Brill a year earlier. IRM photo from the Roy Benedict Collection.

Very quickly a commonality between all of the trailers being built emerged: center-entrance design. Center-entrance electric cars became all the rage for both motor cars and trailers during the mid-1910s, though center-entrance motor cars fell out of favor quickly and many were rebuilt or scrapped after only a decade or two of service. For trailers, the design made sense. Without the need to fit motors or other bulky electrical equipment under the floor, trailers could be built lower to the ground – especially in the center section between the trucks – to permit easier boarding. This low entry resembled the eccentric “hobbleskirt” cars built around 1912. And with only a single crewman aboard the trailer, it made sense to funnel boarding passengers through a single point to pay their fare. Of hundreds of streetcar trailers built for dozens of cities in the 1910s and 1920s, virtually all had a center-entrance layout.

Many large cities bought trailers. Cleveland ended up with over 400 of them, Pittsburgh with 175, Toronto with 225, Detroit with 200, St. Louis with 180, and Boston with 55. Mostly it was large systems that bought them, but Portland, Maine, bought eight and even Chattanooga bought two. Other cities like Rochester, New York, rebuilt aged streetcars as center-entrance trailers. Between 1915 and 1920 nearly 1,000 trailers were ordered from North American car builders.

A CSL 169-series car pulls a trailer from Dearborn onto Madison in the Loop, probably around 1923-1925. The car is signed for North Western Station on the dash, a major destination on the Madison Street route. IRM photo from the Stephen Scalzo Collection.

On paper, trailers made sense for the reasons outlined above. They were cheaper to build than motorized cars, and only needed to be crewed by one man, but they carried as many (or more) passengers. However in actual service, they often proved less than successful. They invariably slowed down service wherever they were used. Some cities, like Cleveland and Chicago, ordered streetcars with larger motors that could tow trailers, but many other cities simply tried to use existing streetcars whose motors weren’t up to the task. Baltimore ordered 100 trailers and they saw almost no use because there were few streetcars on hand that could tow them.

Even when trailers could keep to the schedule, they only made economic sense in certain situations. Many systems ran single streetcars infrequently enough that replacing two motor cars with a single motor-trailer train meant headways so long as to be a real inconvenience to riders. In many cities, they just didn’t have enough riders to justify two-car trains, or the confusion of dividing loads of passengers between the two cars of the train meant additional delays. The trailer trains tended to make more stops because with two cars’ worth of riders, it was more likely that at least one person would want to alight at any given stop. And as the 1920s wore on, the increasing amount of automobile traffic proved problematic because the motor-trailer trains became more of a nuisance to road traffic and because their slow speed became more of a contrast with the ever-speedier auto and bus competition.

A 1300-series Cleveland Peter Witt built in the company shops in 1925 pulls a slightly older Kuhlman-built center-entrance trailer in service in the late 1940s. Bruce Wells Collection.

In most cities that used streetcar trailers, trailer operation ended during the Great Depression if it hadn’t already been curtailed. By 1930, trailer operation had already ended in Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and Detroit followed not long after. St. Louis and Boston kept a few trailers around through World War II, but they were out of service by 1945. The last city to maintain street railway trailer operation was Cleveland, which ran trailers until 1951.

Chicago’s Streetcar Trailers – Design

Most cities adopted trailers for the cost savings. While that was certainly a factor for the Chicago Surface Lines, the biggest reason that the CSL embarked on a program of trailer operation was congestion in the Loop. The population of Chicago increased by roughly half a million people every decade for the fifty years from 1880 to 1930. As the streetcar network grew to accommodate the rising traffic, the constrained trackage in the Loop became increasingly congested. Trailer operation was viewed as a potential solution.

Streetcar trailers had been a regular feature in Chicago around the turn of the century, with grip cars on the city’s cable railway network pulling trains of single- and double-truck trailers – and, in later years, also pulling electric cars. But with those early electric streetcars hard-pressed to tow anything larger than a flimsy single-truck car, trailer operation died out quickly after cable car operation ceased in 1906. In 1915 the newly created CSL obtained permission from the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to run trailers, though, and began studying the issue. However, it wasn’t until 1920 that work on Chicago’s first modern streetcar trailer began.

The prototype Chicago trailer, car 8000, is shown on June 17, 1920 when new. This may have been the last Chicago streetcar still painted in the old dark green paint scheme when built. It’s shown on the transfer table at West Shops. The Tomlinson coupler is clearly evident. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

Construction work on a single prototype car began on March 26, 1920, at West Shops. The design of the car was credited to H.H. Adams, CSL Superintendent of Equipment, and his staff of engineers. Adams requested that construction on the prototype car be completed within 60 days, and, while it ended up taking 78 days, it was still quite a feat for the shop forces.

Construction was generally based on the “Odd 17” type cars that had been constructed at West Shops two years earlier, a design which itself had been based on the 3000/6000-series cars built in 1914. The prototype trailer had 12-gauge steel sides up to the belt rail, was of mainly wood construction over the belt rail, and had a high arch roof. The sides were constructed entirely of standard structural steel sections and plates and were designed to save weight wherever possible. The window guards were made of hollow brass tubing, rather than heavy wire screen like on the older CSL cars, and were built to fit in between the window posts so that storm windows could be hung outside of them. Like on the “Odd 17” cars, Utility box ventilators on the roof were used.

The symmetrical design of the trailers is clearly evident, as is the low profile and drop center section. Car 8000 is pictured at West Shops on June 17, 1920. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

As with virtually all street railway trailers built around this time, the prototype car was of low-floor, center-entrance design. Brill 67F trailer trucks with 22-inch wheels were used. While most cities that ran trailers used them as single-ended cars, the prototype CSL car was designed for double-end operation and was completely symmetrical. On each side, a pair of large air-operated sliding doors that together were 6’6” wide could be opened to board passengers. The floor in the center well of the car was just 15-1/2” above the rail head and there was a single 10-1/2” step up from the center well to either end of the car. In the boarding well, the conductor was given a movable 6-inch-high platform that could be placed on the left (street) side of the car, whatever its direction at the time, so that he could face boarding passengers and collect fares. Fitted to a stanchion were a signal bell, to communicate with the motor car, and air valves for operating the doors.

The center well in the prototype trailer is shown here. The conductor’s platform has been placed on the right and his removable door handles can be seen on the stanchion in the center of that doorway. In the foreground is the freestanding hand brake. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

The car’s interior was plainly decorated with a cherry finish and yellow Agasote headlining. There were rattan-covered seats for 62 people, more than any other car on the system, with 24 transverse walkovers plus a few longitudinal “nickel seats” near the doors and curved bench seats at the ends. The outside of the car was painted dark green and lettered in silver leaf, per CSL practice at the time. It was given the number 8000.

It was thought that the 101-700 series “Big Pullmans” were good candidates to pull trailers, as their motors had sufficient power, so a single car was modified to pull trailer 8000. Car 505 acquired air-operated folding doors on the “long step” side of each platform, replacing the three-leaf folding doors it was built with. A line breaker and larger air compressor were installed. The car’s bulkheads were removed, and the conductor was given a platform even with the car body floor so that he could see better over the heads of boarding passengers. Cars 505 and 8000 were both fitted with Tomlinson couplers and an electric jumper to power the trailer’s lights and heat. The jumper also carried a signal circuit as part of an interlock that prevented the train from moving if the trailer’s doors were open. Before long the Tomlinson couplers were replaced with Van Dorn tight-lock couplers, possibly because the Van Dorn design incorporated the air and electrical connections into the coupler head and made separate jumpers unnecessary.

After a brief experiment with Tomlinson couplers, the motor-trailer sets always used Van Dorn #1450 couplers as shown here. Air connections were automatically made through the coupler head and the electrical connector was on one side for trailers and the other side for motor cars to avoid any shorts. IRM photo from the Van Dorn Collection.

The test train was placed in service on June 18, 1920, just six days after car 8000 was outshopped. The train made its first trip on Madison Street, carrying company officers, engineers, city representatives, and newsmen, and was then tested on several lines throughout the city. Before long it entered regular service on the Madison Street line and by the end of January 1921 it had racked up 10,424 miles in service. At the time there was no loop at Austin so car 505 was run around the trailer at the western terminus of the line.

The prototype motor-trailer set is shown here at West Shops, with “Big Pullman” 505 leading trailer 8000. The folding air doors on 505 are clearly visible but otherwise it’s virtually unchanged externally. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

The conclusion after this test period was that trailer operation was practical – with some caveats. The motors on the “Big Pullmans” could pull trailers, but they started to heat up at a steady rate and could only be relied upon for a single trip before they needed a three-hour layover to cool down. This meant that the trailer trains could only be used during rush hour, but that was when they were needed anyway. CSL intended to eventually buy 200 trailers, and convert 200 motor cars to pull them, but initially spending authority was granted by the PUC only to build 50 trailers at West Shops. These would be numbered 8001-8030 and 9000-9019. Before long, CSL was able to make the case that trailer operation would provide significant cost savings and the purchase of an additional 50 trailers was authorized. These cars were ordered from the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia, which had built CSL’s most recent large order of cars back in 1914. They would be numbered 8031-8060 and 9020-9039.

"Big Pullman" 529 is pulling brand new trailer 9002 in this advertisement for Van Dorn automatic couplers. Both cars are in gleaming new red and cream paint. John Csoka Collection.

To pull these cars, plans and specifications were drawn up for 50 new motor cars with larger motors that would be capable of pulling trailers all day, including through the tunnels. However, the price of $18,000 per car was too high and CSL instead elected to rebuild 110 of the “Big Pullmans,” cars 501-610 (with 505 already having been rebuilt), to pull trailers. Like car 505, they received air-operated folding doors, line switches, couplers, and bigger air compressors, but they did not have their bulkheads removed.

One of the first trailers to enter service would have been 8021, shown here at West Shops on the penultimate day of 1921 already showing signs of wear and tear. The car is fitted with a Van Dorn #1450 tight-lock coupler. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

Construction on the trailers began at West Shops in early 1921, the trailers becoming the first CSL cars built with the company’s new color scheme of carmine red below the belt rail and cream above with tile red trim, brown roof, and olive green underbody. By late summer the first batches of trailers, and rebuilt “Big Pullmans” to tow them, were ready.

Chicago’s Streetcar Trailers – Operation

The first route to see regular trailer operation was Clark-Wentworth, where 15 motor-trailer trains (hereafter referred to simply as “trains”) entered service on September 1, 1921, running from the 80th Street loop north through the Loop to Howard during the morning and evening rush hours. By the end of the month, 30 trains were in service, with about two-thirds running out of Devon station and the remainder out of 77th Street. But the trains were getting hopelessly delayed in the Loop and the decision was made to turn both north and south side trains back at the Loop, rather than run them through, starting December 22nd. By early 1922 there were 45 trains in operation on the Clark and Wentworth lines, albeit not in through operation.

The early days of CSL trailer operation looked like this: CSL 591 pulls trailer 8018 signed for service on Grand Avenue. Dates of trailer operation on Grand suggest this photo was taken between July 1922 and May 1923. John Csoka Collection.

On February 6, 1922, the Cicero Avenue line saw 13 trains put into service. They only lasted five months: in July, the Town of Cicero paved alongside the streetcar tracks and raised the grade about six inches, which would foul the trailers. The trains were taken off the Cicero route on July 12th and the next day eight trains were put into service on Crawford Avenue (Pulaski Road) between Bryn Mawr Avenue and 31st Street and Kostner. The same day, another 20 trains were put into service on Grand Avenue, and on November 22, 1922, a further 13 trains were put into service on Ogden Avenue.

For just a few months, 169-series cars pulled trailers on the Ogden line, as shown here on September 14, 1923. Car 1728 was finished by West Shops on June 16, 1923, and a month after this photo it and trailer 8053 would be moved to Madison Street. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

On all lines, the trailers were used only during rush hours due to the limitations of the “Big Pullmans.” On the Ogden line, the trains were kept coupled and looped at the west end via Ogden, Crawford, and 22nd Streets. On the Crawford and Grand lines, there was no loop, so at the end of the line each trailer would be dropped and then picked up by the following motor car.

In another photo taken of a trailer in operation on the Ogden line, the conductor is demonstrating the operation of a street switch for the company photographer. The center well of the trailer can easily be seen through the 6’6”-wide door opening. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

In May of 1923, the trains were moved again. The Grand Avenue viaduct over the Chicago & North Western tracks on the west side of the Chicago River was deteriorating and operation of two-car trains over the viaduct was prohibited by the CSL Engineering Department that month. The potential to run the trailers on Cicero was revisited and it was found that, despite the raised grade, the trailers could run if the wheel guards under the car ends were modified. On May 7, 1923, trailer operation was resumed on Cicero, primarily serving the rush hour crowds going to and from the Western Electric plant.

Over the summer of 1923, the 169-series CSL cars were delivered. These cars were ordered in the fall of 1922, with 69 cars being built at West Shops, 70 by J.G. Brill, and 30 by McGuire-Cummings. They were steel-sided, arch-roof PAYE cars broadly similar to the 1914 3000/6000-series cars. However unlike those cars, which were two-motor cars, these were built with four motors and were intended from the start to be capable of hauling trailers. The order provided for enough cars to pull all of the company’s trailers and also replace 65 cars lost in the Devon car house fire of January 26, 1922.

One of the 169-series cars built at West Shops, car 1775, is shown in a staged photo with trailer 8023 in tow. The motor car is in its as-delivered color scheme, with a cream letterboard, while the trailer has been repainted by the CSL in the newer color scheme with a red letterboard. CTA photo from the Bill Wulfert Collection.

The new cars were capable of pulling trailers all day, without having to sit out-of-service to let their motors cool, and CSL immediately took advantage of this ability. On October 14, 1923, trailer train operation was instituted on Madison Avenue using 66 trains comprised of a trailer pulled by one of the new 169-series cars. Madison was one of the system’s busiest lines and the trains ran 18 hours a day. The line was also well-suited to trailer operation because the trains could be turned at the outer end, either at a new loop built in 1921 at the line’s western terminus at Austin Boulevard or at the old cable car barn at Springfield Avenue.

Good photos of CSL trains in regular service aren’t common. This view, taken sometime during the 1920s, shows 1756 pulling trailer 8049 on Madison Street. Records suggest that many Madison motor cars only had a single coupler but this car has two. The open ground in the background may be Garfield Park. David Sadowski Collection.

To provide enough equipment, all trailer operation on Clark, Wentworth, Crawford, and Ogden was eliminated, leaving only Madison and Cicero running trailers. While “Big Pullmans” continued to pull the trailers on Cicero, Madison used all 169-series cars. Since it was unnecessary to run around the trailers at the line terminus, the 169-series cars used in this service had a Van Dorn coupler fitted to only one end. Cars 1721-1785 and 3119-3125 were thusly fitted with couplers and assigned to Madison. The couplers were salvaged from 36 of the “Big Pullmans,” though not long afterward one coupler each was removed from 54 of the trailers to re-equip 27 of the “Big Pullmans” due to a shortage of motor cars on the Cicero line. After 1925, 169-series cars 1777-1785, 6155-6159, 6172, and 6173 were all assigned to 77th Street and ran on Halsted.

One of the final group of trailers built in 1923 to replace cars lost in the Devon car barn fire was car 9042. It’s shown here on August 7, 1928, at North Avenue Station while assigned to the Cicero line. Robert V. Mehlenbeck photo from the Krambles-Peterson Archive.

In the meantime, a final order for seven trailers was placed with West Shops in September 1923 to replace nine trailers that had been lost in the 1922 Devon fire. Cars 9040-9046 were completed in January 1924.

The fifth issue of the CSL's new employee newsletter, Surface Service, in August 1924 led with an article about the new MU cars going into service on Madison. IRM Collection.

Around this time, CSL made an attempt at a different type of train operation: multiple-unit (MU) motor cars. An order of 100 MU cars, similar to the 169-series but equipped with GE control and capable of running in trains of two coupled cars, arrived in late 1924 and early 1925. This was a bid to address the shortcomings that were becoming evident with trailer operation. Unfortunately, the MU trains proved not to be much faster than the trailer trains, and in the end, CSL curtailed MU car operation on most lines within just a couple of years. However the MU cars themselves, modern and fully capable of solo operation, ran well into the 1950s. 

IRM’s trailer, car 9020, is shown in a company photograph probably dating to about 1925. It’s had one coupler removed for single-ended operation on the Halsted line, and the 169-class car pulling it, car 6159, also has only one coupler fitted. Both cars also wear a fresh coat of the new company colors of red sides and letterboard with cream along the windows. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

On February 3, 1925, a third line received trailers: Halsted Street. The trailer trains on Halsted did not run the entire length of the line, but rather turned at the Waveland Avenue loop in the north and at the 79th Street loop in the south. Similar to the arrangement on Madison, the Halsted trailer trains consisted of a 169-series car towing a trailer, each car fitted with only one coupler and set up for effectively single-ended operation. The motor and trailer cars were cars that had formerly been used on Madison, and, for Halsted service, were operated out of 77th Street.

What happened here isn’t clear, but the center well of trailer 8043 obviously took the brunt of a collision with something. The Madison-Wells station on the Loop elevated is visible in the background. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

Between 1925 and 1930, trailer operation took place on a fairly consistent basis. All-day trailer train service was provided on Madison, which used 54 trains, and Halsted, which used eight trains, both lines using 169-series motor cars. The Cicero line ran trailers only during weekday rush hours and utilized 23 trains powered by “Big Pullmans.” The three depots that the trains were based out of were Kedzie, for the Madison Street line; 77th Street, for Halsted; and North Avenue, for the Cicero line.

It’s July 13, 1929, and a 169-series car is pulling trailer 8031 east on Madison about to cross LaSalle in the Loop. Auto traffic is increasing but has not yet overwhelmed the streetscape. In barely more than a year, the economic upheavals that haven’t started yet will end trailer service on Madison. Robert V. Mehlenbeck photo from the Krambles-Peterson Archive.

In late 1929 and early 1930, as the effects of the Depression worsened, CSL began instituting service cutbacks. Service reductions on other lines made enough “Big Pullmans” available that on May 21, 1930, trailer operation on Cicero was eliminated and the trains were replaced by additional motor cars. On Saturday, July 19th, the trailers were taken out of service on Madison and that line, too, switched to entirely single-car operation with 169-series cars. Halsted was the last holdout, but in September of 1930, it saw trailer service curtailed and replaced by single-car service. The last trailers ran in service in Chicago on September 9th on Halsted Street.

The Last Trailer: Car 9020

Although there was no more need for the trailers, and dropping trailer operation was popular with riders due to the speeding up of service that resulted, CSL was not done with the cars. They were less than a decade old and far lighter and more modern than many of the 25-year-old wood cars the Surface Lines had in daily service. It was announced that the trailers would be equipped with motors, controllers, and compressors, and put into service as two-man center-entrance streetcars. But during 1931 and 1932 the Depression continued to worsen, traffic continued to decline, and this project was abandoned.

Trailer 9028, which like 9020 had been in Halsted Street service, is shown sitting outside the Archer car barn on August 6, 1937. Ed Frank photo from the Krambles-Peterson Archive.

The 99 trailers were put into storage, with most of them ending up at Kedzie, Cottage Grove, and 77th Street stations, plus a handful at West Shops. In 1931 and 1932 most of the cars at 77th were transferred to Archer, and in 1934 the cars stored at Kedzie were moved to Western Avenue, being joined in 1937 by the cars that had been at Archer. At Western, space to store the trailers indoors was created in 1933-4 by scrapping ancient 1890s-era single-truckers that had been stored since 1915 for possible emergency use. In the late 1930s, many of the trailers were stored for a time at the old Chicago & Interurban Traction car house on 88th at Vincennes. When that building was sold by CSL in 1942, those cars mostly ended up at 77th Street.

Trailer 8027 is under tow (using a tow bar specially designed to hook onto its Van Dorn coupler) behind “Big Pullman” 143 at 39th and Cottage Grove. This was one of the cars rehabbed in 1942 and it’s possible that it’s being taken from Cottage Grove to 77th Street for this work to commence. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

During the depths of the Depression the CSL had some 800 cars in storage, but when World War II started, there was very quickly a shortage of rolling stock. In May of 1942, 10 of the trailers were overhauled at West Shops and South Shops to be put back into service. Couplers were reinstalled on one end of 169-series cars 1721-1730 with the goal of putting trailer trains back into service on Halsted by late 1942. However CSL was now facing a manpower shortage that was exacerbating the car shortage, and the trailers were never put into service. Instead, they ended up stored at Cottage Grove.

Trailer 8050 is fresh out of West Shops from its 1942 overhaul. But despite the work that had gone into the car, it would never go back into service. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

This interior photo of car 8050 was most likely snapped in 1942 following its overhaul at West Shops. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

The first trailers scrapped were ten cars that were cut up in 1944. When the war ended, it became obvious that trailer operation would not be returning, and in 1945 some 21 of the trailers were converted for salt storage and located at depots around the system. Nine cars went to North Avenue, with others going to Burnside, Devon, Kedzie, and 69th Street. At South Shops, 44 of the cars were pivoted on their trucks and shoved adjacent to each other on temporary rails for use as large, conjoined storerooms. The remaining cars were put to use as offices, storerooms, watchmen’s shanties, etc. It wasn’t until April 15, 1948, that the trailers were officially retired and taken off the books of the Chicago Transit Authority.

Trailer 8013 is shown here at South Shops, still on its trucks and wearing a fresh coat of red paint but in use as a storeroom. The 169-series car to the right may be car 3142, which was the only car of that series to escape the scrapper’s torch. David Sadowski Collection.

The prototype trailer, car 8000, ended its days ignominiously on the ground at the materials storage yard at 39th and Halsted. This undated photo is curious because a close examination reveals that the car has leather semi-bucket seats inside of it rather than the standard rattan seats. When and why these were installed is a mystery. David Sadowski Collection.

Several of the trailers had their trucks turned 90 degrees so that they could be shoved side-by-side at South Shops for use as connected storerooms. Car 9037 was the car at the end of this picture taken by Barney Neuberger. IRM photo from the Roy Benedict Collection.

A number of them remained in use as storerooms for years, or, in some cases, decades. In 1970, the Electric Railway Historical Society, which at the time owned most of the Chicago streetcars that had been preserved and stored them in a barn in suburban Downers Grove, elected to purchase one of the last of the trailers for preservation. The car selected was car 9020, one of the 50 cars ordered from Brill in early 1921. Car 9020 had been delivered to the CSL on August 6, 1921. Its assignment during the first few years of trailer operation is uncertain, but evidence suggests that after 1925 it may have been assigned to Halsted. If true, then it would have been among the cars that closed out trailer service in Chicago in September 1930.

When car 9020 was brand new, it looked like this. Sister car 9030 from the same order is shown on December 30, 1921, at West Shops shortly after delivery from Brill. Befitting the time of year, it’s got its storm windows installed. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

The CSL company photographer captured this broadside view of car 9020 in the mid-1920s, probably in 1925, as that’s when the car was assigned to service on Halsted Street. It’s been repainted with a red letterboard and has lost its coupler at one end, meaning it’s set up for single-ended service with this photo showing the curb side of the car. Krambles-Peterson Archive.

Once the trailers were pressed into service as storerooms in the 1940s, it appears that car 9020 fared better than most. A photo from 1956 shows it on its trucks, on live rail, sitting inside South Shops and employed as a storage locker of some sort. But within a couple of years car 9020 had ended up outdoors, shorn of its trucks and coupler, sitting on ties in the open area south of the shop buildings. It was near the yardmaster’s office, located in the body of 1934 experimental car 4001, about where the Family Dollar is today. This is essentially where it remained until 1970.

The date is September 21, 1956, and car 9020 is being used as a storeroom of some sort at the giant South Shops facility. The car appears to be in excellent condition, not surprising given its indoor home, and is still on its trucks on live rail. William C. Hoffman photo, William Shapotkin and David Sadowski Collections.

Car 9020 is pictured at South Shops, parked next to a W-series cab-on-flat utility car, date unknown. It’s hard to say whether this was taken before or after the car’s stint as a storage room inside South Shops. IRM photo from the Stephen Scalzo Collection.

By the late 1950s, 9020 had been moved out of South Shops and out into the yard in the southeast corner of the complex. It’s shown sitting on ties, shorn of its trucks and coupler, with a forlorn “Bowling Alley” salt car visible in the background awaiting scrapping. IRM photo from the Roy Benedict Collection.

When car 9020 was acquired by ERHS, the organization was already under some pressure from the owner of the farm it occupied, and the decision was made to move car 9020 (and car 4001, acquired by ERHS at about the same time) to the Illinois Railway Museum in Union for an indeterminate period of storage. At about the same time, ERHS was able to acquire two sets of trucks and a car’s worth of Van Dorn tight-lock couplers from the CTA. These came off of some trailers at North Avenue that had been used for storing bags of salt for years. Although those cars’ bodies were badly rusted out, some had retained their trucks and couplers and these parts were fitted to car 9020. Cars 9020 and 4001 were moved to Union around June 1970 and placed on a piece of disconnected track on the north side of Central Avenue, about where track 54 is today. As it turned out, in 1973 ERHS was evicted and its collection was donated to IRM. That year the rest of the ERHS collection joined 9020 in Union.

Car 9020 sat outside until the construction of Barn 7 in 1985, at which point it – and a few other ERHS cars that had been sitting outside, including CSL 1467 and F305 as well as West Towns 141 – were moved indoors. For many years, it was displayed next to “Big Pullman” 460, roughly approximating a standard motor-trailer train, though car 460 never pulled trailers. Indeed, although IRM’s cars 144, 460, and the fully-restored 169-series car 3142 all belong to car types that towed trailers, none of these three was ever fitted with couplers. As such, 9020 is an orphan without a motor car.

Today, car 9020 is on display in Barn 7 at IRM. It was painted in CSL colors many years go but never lettered, and it still wears the tarpaper roof that protected it while it was stored outdoors. Author’s photo.

It remains, however, a unique and fascinating piece of history. It’s not only locally important – besides car 9020 being the last Chicago streetcar trailer, it and car 3142 are the only two examples of more than 1,000 arch-roof steel cars once operated by the CSL. It’s also one of very few 20th-century streetcar trailers preserved anywhere. Only 10 center-entrance streetcar trailers still exist, some in derelict condition, and only two or three are more complete than CSL 9020. The car remains on public display, repainted but generally unrestored, a candidate for future cosmetic restoration so that it can better represent the trailer era on the Surface Lines.

CSL Trailer Specifications

Length overall: 47’6”

Width overall: 8’6”

Height over roof: 10’9-1/2”

Weight of body: 17,700 lbs. (equipped for double-end operation)

Weight of trucks: 8,300 lbs.

Total weight: 26,000 lbs.

Seating capacity: 62

Trucks: Brill 67F with 22” wheels

Door engines: National Pneumatic Co.

Heaters: Consolidated Car Heating Co.

Ventilators: Railway Utility Ventilator Co.

This CSL company schematic, dated June 18, 1925, shows the layout of the 8000- and 9000-series trailers. IRM Collection.

Preserved Center-Entrance Streetcar Trailers

• Denver Tramways 610 – Woeber, 1913 – complete/restored, on display, Aurora History Museum, Aurora, CO
• New York State Railways 1402 – NYSR, 1914 (rebuilt from 1904 open car) – body, stored, New York Museum of Transportation, Rush, NY
• Cleveland Railway 2318 – Kuhlman, 1918 – body only, stored, Northern Ohio Railway Museum, Chippewa Lake, OH
• Cleveland Railway 2365 – homebuilt, 1918 – mostly complete, stored, Seashore Trolley Museum, Kennebunkport, ME
• United Railways & Electric 7059 – Brill, 1920 – frame, stored derelict, Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Baltimore, MD
• Chicago Surface Lines 9020 – Brill, 1921 – partly complete, on display, Illinois Railway Museum, Union, IL
• Public Service Coordinated Transport 4584 – Osgood-Bradley, 1921 – mostly complete, under restoration, Shore Line Trolley Museum, East Haven, CT
• St. Louis Public Service 426 – St. Louis, 1921 – complete, stored, National Museum of Transportation, Kirkwood, MO
• Toronto Transportation Commission 2395 – CC&F, 1923 – frame, stored derelict, Halton County Radial Railway, Rockwood, ON
• Louisville Railway 371 – Kuhlman, 1924 – body only, privately owned, Clarksville, IN