Visit to North Freedom

On Friday and Saturday I went up to North Freedom to help some friends of mine at Mid-Continent, Bill Buhrmaster and Pete Becker, acting as a consultant on canvas roofs.  Nice work if you can get it -- all I have to do is point out what needs to be done, and they get to do the hard stuff.  This side of the roof is already done, and looks quite good.  (And I'm always glad to see that my students are taking good notes!)

This car itself is quite interesting in its own right.  East Jordan and Southern #2 was originally built by Osgood-Bradley in 1864, making it one of the oldest passenger cars in existence.  It was heavily rebuilt over the years, and was resold in 1902 by the Hicks Locomotive and Car Works to the EJ&S, making it an honorary Hicks car.  So I'm doubly glad to help.

(Pictures of the exterior are available on the MCRM website here.)

The interior is being extensively restored, and this gives us a chance to see some of the original features of the car.

In the picture above, you can how the original carlines are still in place underneath the hips, and have an ogee shape that is quite characteristic of the 1860's.  These were later supplemented with new pieces to change the hips to a convex curve like later wooden cars always had.  

Much of the interior still features architectural details characteristic of the 1860's period.

At one time, the car must have had Pintsch gas lighting fixtures, as shown by the vents through the roof, but these were removed by the EJ&S at some point.  The car is being restored to its configuration as a combine on the EJ&S during the end of its service life, the only feasible choice.

Several other wooden cars are in the car shop being worked on, and the one I'm most interested in is the Munising 64, an actual Hicks-built coach.  It's gotten a complete structural overhaul, as seen here:

Both end platforms had deteriorated and have been replaced.

In return, they're giving us four complete seats from a CA&E car, #300.  And that brings me to a story.

Back in 1962, the Mid-Continent guys were looking for seats for a couple of wooden passenger cars they had acquired, and they went to Wheaton.  There they looked over the cars that had not yet been scrapped, and at first they decided to take the rattan seats from #36(!).  So Ray Buhrmaster, Bill's father, wrote out a check and sent it in.  Then Mr. Knoop at the CA&E realized that the 36 had already been spoken for, so he talked them into taking the seats and baggage racks from car 300 instead.  (The 36's seats, of course, stayed in the car and are still there today!)  Bill gave me some photocopies of the correspondence.

The seats from the 300 were installed in the EJ&S #2 for many years, and were removed when they were able to get the correct type of seating fabricated.  And we have been able to acquire them as spares for the 308 and 309.  Of course, these interurban seats are too narrow for standard steam-road coaches.  Mid-Continent also got the seats from a North Shore car (unknown number) for another of their cars, and these were later sold to IRM also.  So everybody's happy -- I hope!