North Shore Line Day, Part II

Frank writes...

As mentioned in the previous post, North Shore Line Day went great. The weather cooperated, operations generally hewed extremely closely to the timetable, and the place was buzzing with activity for the entire day - especially the depot, where there were enough train departures (in both directions!) thanks to Zach's intricate planning to keep things hopping.

Following a quick orientation talk in the depot for the operating crews, emcee Zach gave a short speech to assembled visitors at 10:30 to kick off the festivities. In the background you can see one of the surprises for the day: the 354, which hasn't carried passengers in over 20 years. Zach mentioned several NSL employees who were also IRM members, including most notably the museum's founder, Howard Odinius, an NSL motorman.

My first scheduled train wasn't until 11:30, I went over to 50th Avenue to check out the crew working on getting the station heated with its good old coal-burning stove. Here we see an unidentified person, Tim, blog reader John (who flew in from Montana for this event!), and David working on getting a decent fire going outside the building.

A few minutes later I stopped by again; here Tim and David eye the stove, which was not cooperating. It just wasn't drafting properly, so a lot of smoke was getting into the station. After fighting with it for awhile they decided to extinguish the fire and leave the station unheated. The most likely cause was some animal getting into the stove pipe during the last couple of weeks since it was hooked up, but without a good way to get in there and clean it out on short notice, there wasn't much to be done.

Up at the depot, Harold spent the day as the Highwood dispatcher. The Speed Trophy was displayed in the window for visitors to admire.

I went for a ride on the 354, which was nice. The heat even works! Father-and-son team Jon and Dan, with help from Norm, are the ones to thank for championing and accomplishing the return of this car to public service for the event. Hopefully it will be seen more on the streetcar line this year.

There were a few hours when I didn't take any photos because I was in train service. By the time I took this photo at 4:15 or so, we'd lit the (CA&E) marker lanterns on the 229 as it was starting to get a little dim.

It's about 4:30 and extra 229 east is ready to leave East Union while extra 749 west passes it on Station track 2. The green cars were on a repositioning move to get everything in the correct order.

Shortly afterward, train #425, the Milwaukee Limited, showed up. Cars 251 and 757 make for a pretty striking appearance!

And then all five NSL passenger cars were assembled on Station Track 1 for a departure a bit after 5pm as train #428, the Chicago Limited. This was the last scheduled train of the day.

Most of us went for a ride on the five-car train, though Richard agreed to stay behind as the "designated survivor" to reset the substation should we trip it out! Fortunately, there were no such issues. The 749 was nice and toasty.

And that's about it for North Shore Line Day. Then on Sunday, the museum ran Cabin Fever Day, which was the Diesel Department's answer to the Saturday festivities. Three trains ran: the Zephyr, the bi-levels, and a short train consisting of C&NW SD50 7009 in its IRM operating debut (it was only made serviceable by our volunteers within the past week) pulling the dynamometer and the ICG caboose.

I stopped out for a brief visit with my daughter and we went for a very enjoyable ride on the Zephyr. It snowed overnight and it was really nice to ride the Zephyr through the snow-covered fields. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the trains themselves, just this photo of my daughter. But the good news is that we were just running diesels, and you can go down to your local grade crossing and see those whenever you like! (Just kidding, of course - but there are some very good photographers in the Diesel Department, and I’m sure photos will be showing up online!)