Sunday Switching in the Spring

Frank writes...

There are two seasons at IRM: winter, and switching.

When I arrived on Sunday mid-afternoon, a switch move was already well underway. Tracks 41 and 42 inside the east end of Barn 4 are going to be rebuilt, and that means clearing the cars out of that end of the barn. Track 41 is no trouble, as the pit and the adjacent spot are always kept rotating. But on track 42, Michigan Electric 28 needed to move out. So here's Joel (L) and Norm helping to get CCW 300 coupled up.

Nick was running the locomotive, while Greg and Joel served as ground men. There were regular stops to let the grids on the 300 cool down. Here, the locomotive pauses at the entrance to the barn, as Norm, Nick, and Greg take a quick break.

The 28 as seen in Yard 4 west. It's always kind of nifty photographing cars going around these curves, especially long cars like the 28. Norm pointed out that this yard and its nominally 90' radius curves are nothing - the 28 regularly operated around 35' radius curves in service.

And here we are on the tail track. The rebuilt roof and rear end of the car are plainly evident, as are some of the side windows towards the back of the car, which were removed and rebuilt some years ago. Work on this car has mostly paused during COVID but Norm said he's eager to get back working on it, which should happen sometime soon. For the next few months the car is expected to be in Barn 8. Back in the mid-1990s, the 28 was stored next to the door at the southeast corner of the barn for a while, and that's where Norm worked to chip all of the house-era concrete out of the floor at the back of the car.

The 460 had been extracted from the roof booth to let the 28 out, but afterward it was put back. Here it is being shoved back through Yard 4 by the 300. At the moment, of course, the 460 can't move itself because of the disconnected power cables going to the roof.

And then it was time for a different, unrelated switch move. An issue with the 3142 has meant that the Matchbox is needed for service during the upcoming Bunny Trolley Hop event, so the 1374 needed to be switched out from behind the 18. That meant pulling the 4391 (which was at the door, and will also be used for the Easter event) and the 18 down to the tail track to allow the 1374 to head to the pit for inspection work. Here's the 18 at the tail track. It doesn't look much different than the last time it was out, since it's been too cold to paint in the interim.

And here's the lineup on the tail track.

Here's a shot taken in the evening of the big empty space in Barn 4 looking from the east end. Visible cars include the Cleveland PCC, currently having its second truck rebuilt; the 65, with ongoing roof work; the 460, also with roof work in progress; IT 415, being prepped for spray painting; and the 1374 on the pit for inspection work.

And because you can never have too many of the same, virtually identical photo of windows sitting on a bench in the wood shop, here are the latest three 18 windows to receive Bankers Cream paint. They're now ready to go into the car, which is good, because we're opening for the season next Saturday and I need to close up the window holes on the door side of the car.

Finally, before dinner I trekked out to the streetcar line extension with Richard to do some roster-related exploration. I've been curious to see if I can figure anything out about the history of CRIX 20519, a 1927 insulated boxcar that was heavily rebuilt in 1960. At some point - likely in 1960, though that's not certain - it acquired plug doors, a rather modern installation for an old wood car. Anyway, CRIX was one of a number of reporting marks used by North American Leasing, the owner of the car. But CRIX didn't come about until maybe 1958, so I was curious to see whether there was any evidence on the car of its life (or lives) previous to that.

This photo, taken by Bob Kutella in 2006, appears to show a previous number (10742, I think, though it also appears that there's more than one previous number) on the car. So that's one clue. Then inside the car over the door, Richard and I found - barely visible under the paint, though more might be revealed with some sanding - what appears to read "...INAL NUMBER 3953." The left end of this is cut off by a wooden plug, so no idea whether that's "terminal" or "original" or what.

And then of the two trucks under the car, one is stamped Wabash with a date in the 1950s, while the other one is stamped NWRL with a 1928 date - just a year after the car was (evidently) built. NWRL was North Western Refrigerator Line, the C&NW's answer to BREX, MDC, PFE, etc, and it turns out that NWRL (aka NWX) was purchased by North American in 1946. Is our car an ex-NWRL car? It's hard to say, at least unless we can assign some significance to one of the two previous car numbers that seem to be visible on CRIX 20519. I love mysteries like this!