Happy Halloween from all of us here at the blog! To celebrate, our intrepid freelance photographer Steven has sent along an entire album of photos detailing the activities over Saturday, Sunday, and into Monday. Thanks, Steven!
The big activity on Saturday involved switching to "reload" Barn 6 following the completion of rebuilding work done by a contractor. Here we see the IT Class B on track 63 with the L4 to the right on track 64.
A trio of North Shore cars is heading down the hill at the "end of track" on the tail track at Electric Park with the 749 on the east end.
ComEd 4 pushes the Class B across Central Avenue in the throat to Yard 6. The 1565 isn't operational right now, of course, because its contactors are all being rebuilt. But stay tuned - we hope to have this iconic locomotive back in service soon.
After that, it was time to retrieve the IC MU cars from their temporary home on the 50th Avenue west track. These cars have unusual couplers - maybe Tomlinsons? - so an adapter, shown here, is needed to couple them to anything with MCB couplers.
Here's a nice shot of the interior of one of the IC MU cars. Though a tad bit tired, especially the floors, these cars are really in pretty decent shape and they do run. The factor that limits them from running more often is that our overhead wire would need a lot of work to be pantograph-ready.
This stool was thoughtfully set up for the conductor riding the head end of the shove. We're looking into Barn 6 on Track 61, with the 1100 in the distance.
Now it's Sunday, where Steven was working over in Barn 2 on getting the 415 ready for paint. A lot of this work involved masking. (And note a bit of original IT orange paint peeking out there!)
And more masking.
Here's an overview of the east end of Barn 2 looking east. Over at the northeast corner, on track 21, is the L&N FA, which is in the midst of a long-term and extremely thorough restoration; next is the DuPont (ex-Bath & Hammondsport!) Plymouth, which is getting new cab doors, and the 415 beyond it; in front of us is Milwaukee Road 33C, which just regained a roof hatch; and barely visible on the right, at the southeast corner of the barn, is the UP doodlebug. This spot is where the 966 sat for decades, with the 321 shoved in on top of it and the 309 in the middle of track 24, until the CA&E cars moved to Barn 7 in about 1993 or so. The 966 didn't leave Barn 2 until about 2010.
And now it's Monday, when Steven was able to make it out to IRM again for day #3 of a marathon weekend. Above is the north side of the 415, with all the windows as well as the roof masked.
Plastic sheeting covers the roof to avoid getting overspray all over the canvas. The roof of the car isn't spectacular, but it's not in terrible shape and is serviceable for a while yet. The car was reroofed (well, re-canvased at least) at IRM in the 1970s.
A shot of the 415 looking east-southeast.
With the exception of the ends, it looks like all the initial masking is complete, including all the windows on the south side of the car, shown here.
One more view of the south side of the 415 looking east.
And many thanks to Steven for also painting one more seat for Shaker Heights 18 over in the car shop! Getting all of these seats painted by Frank and Steven is a huge help, and certainly comprises the vast majority of the progress being made on the 18 at the moment.
5 comments:
I rode the IC electrics when I could in my younger days. I thought I remembered 3 and 2 rattan seating. Am I thinking of some other system or were there different configurations of the cars. Thanks, David Johnston.
The 415 roof was stripped to the carlines in '72 or '73, one of the first jobs made possible by the new carbarn, because the original plywood roof was de-laminating. Since at the time we had no way to produce the new panels with the curve built in, as Norm Krental and Jeff Brady did for Michigan Electric 28, Frank Sirinik and Bill McGregor decided to use 1/2" plywood for the gently curved center portion and replace the curved 'hips' with custom milled poplar T&G. The bonnets over the platforms were replaced in kind with two layers of 1/4" basswood.
I'm surprised how poorly the canvas paint has held up. I remember at the time that Frank argued that it was too thick, but was overruled because it was the recommendation of somebody at one of the eastern trolley museums who had experience... looks like Frank was right.
The Illinois Central Electric cars all had the same seating. 2 and 2 rattan walkover seats, plus longitudnal seating near each door. They were basically as built to the end, with only different interior paint colors over the years. Dick Lukin said the interiors were originally orange! In later years they were a peach color. And yes they had Mastipave flooring with many patches over the years.
Thank you Bill, David Johnston
Per CERA B-116 "ELECTRIFICATION BY GE", page 216: "Tomlinson automatic couplers made by the Ohio Brass Company couple the cars together mechanically, electrically, and pneumatically."
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