The 250 Returns

Frank writes...

While the big event Sunday as far as I was concerned was the progress on the 308, there was another memorable occurrence. The tale starts back in the late 1980s... well, okay, actually it starts in 1963, when the North Shore quit and combine 250 was purchased by the Indiana Railway Museum in Westport. You know the one. Eventually INRM sold their entire traction collection, consisting of the 250, MD car 228, and CA&E 318, to TWERHS in East Troy. Two of the three cars made it to Wisconsin without having their ends crushed in - hey, two out of three ain't bad - but the North Shore survivors were in rough shape and only got worse over the ensuing decade or so. In the late 1980s, IRM purchased the majority of the TWERHS collection, including the 250, and the car came to Union. Bill Wulfert photos are here.

The 250 was largely identical to the 251 and 253 already at IRM, except in far worse shape. In 1995 the car was scrapped for parts (see the end of that Bill Wulfert link above), including donating its trucks and motors to Michigan Electric 28. Except that North Shore fan Dave Myers, whose father had worked for the railroad, offered Bob Bruneau a donation in exchange for the end of the car. Bob, ever the salesman, gamely accepted the money and had the end of the car torched off and given to Dave. Well, now it's back.

Dave recently contacted IRM to see whether we were interested in the car end, which he had never gotten around to doing anything with, and we said sure, we'll take it. So on Sunday a group of seven volunteers headed over to the donor's property to pick up the car end.

No heavy equipment was available, but they were able to tip it over onto a flatbed trailer and then used jacks out of their automobiles to raise it up enough to get the anticlimber lifted onto the flatbed. Success!

Here's the gang: Will, Matt, Jimmy, Zach, Dave Myers, Brian, Mikey, and Nathan. First three photos courtesy Dave Myers.

The last three photos are by Zach. Here's the end of the 250 sitting on the trailer.

Once it arrived back at IRM, unloading using the forklift turned out to be a lot easier than loading it by hand had been.

The current plan is to fix this up as a display piece and put it inside one of the barns as an educational exhibit and photo spot. Many thanks to Dave Myers for donating this back to us!