Thomas, Day Two

Frank writes...

On Sunday I was signed up as conductor on the 4391, always the cushiest job at the museum. My motorman for the day was Jeff Obarek.

Zach was running the 144, and in keeping with the theme of the event, he was nattily attired in full London tram driver regalia. Here he is at the start of the day posing next to his car, while Jeff photobombs and shows off the contrasting CTA uniform. Zach pointed out that the colors on his tram may have been correct, but someone had removed the top half of it. Hmm.

And here's the requisite shot of the interior of the "Hornet" before we went into service and it quickly filled up with people. Operations seemed like they went extremely smoothly, and it seemed that everyone had a great time. We had four Chicago streetcars in operation - 1374, 144, 3142, and 4391 - which is always cool to see.

Of course it was "all hands on deck" for Thomas, so there wasn't really much car work going on, though I did run into John in the morning who was getting a bit of work done on the 306 roof before it got too hot. After the end of service, Zach helped me switch around the CA&E cars. The next time they're scheduled is the Vintage Transport Extravaganza in early August, but for that we will need three cars, which means we need to finish inspecting the 319 sometime in the next few weeks. So we put it at the door with the 36-309 behind it.

Many thanks to Zach for getting the above two photos, of me switching the blue cars and then of our three operational cars lined up on the ladder track.

After dinner, Joel, Nick, and I adjusted and tightened the ratchet straps being used to stretch the canvas on the roof of the 460. Thanks, guys!

And in other news, here's a new center bearing for WEPCO L4, one of our Milwaukee steeplecabs. A crack was found in its center bearing plate a year or two ago so it's been out of service since then. But the steam shop (I think?) machined a new center bearing, to which our guys welded the rectangular attachment plate. It still needs the king pin hole bored through the rectangular plate, but the L4 is getting closer to reentering service.