Trolley bus update

Thanks to Richard Schauer for sending along another update of the rapid progress on CTA trolley bus 9631, which is at a contractor in Elgin being repainted. This is an exciting, nearly turn-key project that was made possible by a generous donor. Do you have a bus at the museum you'd like to see painted, and some spare cash you'd rather see go to IRM than IRS? Drop us a line!

I stopped by the shop early this week because of the holiday.  Their business had lightened up a bit this week and they were actively working on 9631 when I was there.  I got another couple (good) pictures of the curb side finished, and another of today's main project- the rear curb-side upper corner.  As expected, it was pretty bad.  The guy doing the work said that when he dug the Bondo out, there was a large gouge in it, where you see the fresh weld in the picture.

The back door is ready to reassemble; they did a bit of welding on its frame to fix some broken welds.  Maybe now it will close easier?

Bill Wulfert found us some genuine new-old-stock CTA heralds for the sides.  These are dated July 1972.  Don't worry about the adhesive- we put four of these on the 2000-series rapid transit cars that we repainted five years ago, and they are still stuck very well.