We'd like to extend our thanks these days to Art Peterson, who has been sending some terrific historic photographs that are helping flesh out our Stephen Scalzo history articles on Illinois electric railways. We've already added some fascinating photos from Art's collection to the Kewanee & Galva, Lee County Central, and Woodstock & Sycamore pages and there are more to come. Remember, if you read the blog on mobile, scroll to the bottom and hit "desktop view" or "web page view" every so often to check out recent updates in the right column.
Anyway, one of Art's recently submitted photos is a mystery, and we're hoping we can crowd-source some information. The photo below was marked K&G, suggesting Kewanee & Galva. But the car isn't quite a match for the K&G's two heavyweight interurban cars, cars 51 and 52, though there are a lot of similarities in the car's design.
EDIT: I posted this on Facebook and within a couple of hours an answer appeared: it's the Youngstown & Ohio River on December 10, 1920. There's even another photo of this incident online here.
4 comments:
I'm shocked simply striking an automobile was enough to cause that much damage to an interurban car, especially a bigger one like this one. I would've figured they were made of something stronger than this.
-Matt Maloy
Matt- The problem is not what gets in front of you, it's what gets under you. Note in the davesrailpix picture that there is a switch. Wheels that are already derailed but running generally straight, do not do nice things when they hit a switch.
R. W. Schauer
Likely the auto got bunched up ahead of the front truck and lifted the body off the truck.
The Y&OR had equipment that was almost identical to the Elgin & Belvidere. The car in the photo looks identical to the E&B combines, although the E&B combines were built by St. Louis, while the full coaches on each road, all built by Niles, appeared to be exact copies. Back in the seventies there was a Y&OR coach body in Leetonia, Ohio according to Bob Bruneau. My Dad and I found this car and talked to the owner, who wanted $1,000 for it. There wasn't that much interest at IRM, but it would have been neat to have something to represent the equipment that used to run on the line.
The North Shore 763 still shows damage from a similar wreck involving a vehicle at a crossing in the late 40s. I think the body has a twist in it . It left the rails and went entirely into the ditch after turning around completely. Look for the hole in the floor in the smoker, that’s where that damage is mostly
R Stahl
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