A House On One End...

 Gregg sends us another progress report on the Illinois Terminal line car, 1702:

Earlier Randy posted a picture of the tack molding for the line car. After running it through the router, I set it all up for priming.

Later I painted the back side. Today the visitor's side received a coat. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll get it attached to the car.

But wait, there's more!

To quote my favorite French philosopher, "Let me tell you a story...."   The 1702 was based in Decatur, and when Bob Bruneau bought it after electric operations on the IT ended, it was waybilled from Decatur to North Chicago, and described naturally enough as a "line car".  But this term had no meaning for steam/diesel railroad employees, and they had never seen anything quite like it, so it got lost.  And when it wound up in the wrong places, the yardmasters did what they always do: tack it onto the end of the next outgoing way freight, and let somebody else deal with it.

Photo from Dave Mewhinney, courtesy the Testagrose Collection

And so Bruneau spent a lot of time on the phone trying to track down his missing line car.  Finally he got in touch with a yardmaster in Kansas City, of all places.  And the man said: "Well, we've got this thing that looks like a house on one end..."  "THAT'S IT!!!"  Bob shouted.  "That's my line car!!!  Send it to North Chicago!"  At last it arrived at IERM in one piece, and the rest is history -- which is still being written.