Bill Wulfert was kind enough to provide a series of photos from his collection that were taken by Illinois Electric Railway Museum member Eddie Mizerocki in the late 1950s. These are photos of CTA work car S-111, previously CRT 1024 and originally Northwestern Elevated Railroad 24, at a time when IERM was considering acquiring the car. It's clear that its condition was far from pristine, but fortunately it was good enough that the museum elected to go through with the acquisition. The rest is history. These photos are copyright Bill Wulfert and may not be copied or reproduced.
6 comments:
I was just wondering what sort of work it did as a "work car", other than carrying workmen where they needed to go.
Yes the S-111 was in rather rough condition. And in fact it did have a yellow swatch of paint in the center of the car with "S-111" crudely painted on the side. The gate cars were only expected to be used for a short time, until newer "old" cars were available to take their place. So they didn't receive full yellow paint jobs.
See Rail & Wire #237 Dec 2013 (page 25) for Eddie Mizerocki's critique of the available "1000" series work motors that were soon to be scrapped. At least the car did get repainted before the April 20, 1958 fan trip.
The S series (Service Cars) were used to pull work trains which included unpowered flatcars, cranes and even a rail grinder. The interiors stored tools and parts needed for projects. And yes the workers rode along to their assignments.
The pictures were taken at the Wilson Avenue shop yard up on the 'L' structure.
Randy,
I'm sure they were used as "mules"; motive power for the work trains that ran at night. The "L" structure required constant maintenance, rail needed to be renewed as did track ties, track planking, and "footwalk", the walkway between the tracks. The majority of this material was delivered at night by trains that operated out of 63rd. Street Lower Yard, located just south of the curve where the Jackson Park "L" turned east over 63rd. St. There was an incline to the south of that curve that led to the ground level material yard, known as Storeroom 48, where the CTA received ties and planking delivered via a connection to Conrail.
I'm most familiar with footwalk renewal, but other jobs were similar. The job started with the carpenter foreman marking out where he wanted his material placed on the walk to be renewed. He'd then requisition the material, in this case bundles of pre-cut walk boards, 4x6 stringers, and 6x6 walk ties. Then the work train would deliver, and the crew would go out a day or two later. If the layout was right, everything needed was at hand just ahead of where the crew was tearing the old walk out, stacking the scrap in 'boxes' built of the used lumber on the new walk right behind where they were working. Typically, these crews worked all summer long, the work trains bringing out new material and picking up the scrap every couple of days. Station platform renewal was handled similarly, with the footwalk all through the station filled with bundles of new planking, replaced over the course of the job with 'scrap boxes'.
The typical work train of the era I worked for CTA, late '75 to early '89, consisted of a pair of mules at each end and maybe four flatcars made from old car frames. If there was bundled material to be handled a crane would be included, otherwise a crew of labors hand stacked everything, typically laying out the new material first, then filling the now empty cars with scrap. When the cars got back to the Lower Yard, the day crew transferred the scrap to trucks for the trip to the dump, then loaded the cars for the next night's delivery.
Thanks, Dennis, that's excellent.
The CTA went through a whole slew of surplus wood cars as work motors. Some of them got physically renumbered with an S-number, others did not. As Bill noted, unless they were in a dedicated role such as a snowplow or tool car, they tended to have short service lives...run 'em until they blew up.
In the pre-CTA era, they would simply grab a regular service car or two out of the yard for work trains.
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