Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Take a Step Back...

Frank writes...


...back in time, in this case. You've read about Monday's news, but what about Sunday's news? Those suspicious characters with day jobs who were alluded to in yesterday's post (ha ha) are guilty of taking too much time to get their photos posted, so you'll just have to make do with yesterday's news tomorrow. Or something.
Sunday was the last day of Day Out With Thomas 2024, and once again I found myself going in circles. Fortunately, it was aboard a streetcar, in this case the 3142. Above, our two operating CTA streetcars are ready to leave the barn in the morning.
And here's the 3142 in Yard 7. Everything went smoothly, the crowds were happy, the weather was beautiful - what more could you want? I ended up doing 30 trips around the car line, so I certainly kept busy.
Someone else keeping busy was Joel, who spent the day inspecting the 308! As with the past few years, we've scheduled the CA&E wood cars to operate for Vintage Transport Extravaganza. But we need three cars to handle the crowds, and with a broken leaf spring under the 36, we're short a car. Enter the 308, which of course still has its motors out for repair - but is serviceable as a trailer, or "coach" as the CA&E called them. A huge thank you to Joel and to our switch crews for bringing the 308 over to Barn 4 on Saturday night and extracting it Sunday evening. I helped couple it up to the 309 and 319 and run it back to Barn 8, but managed to forget to grab a photo - oops. You'll just have to join us on August 4th for the 308's first time carrying passengers in more than five years.

Thanks, too, to Bob Olson for sending along some additional news photos! First, this is the crew that brought the 213's door over to Barn 8 and hoisted it up into the 213. You saw "the rest of the story" in the Monday update. L-R that's Jimmy, Greg, Brian, Richard, and Zach.
Below, Marcus and a younger Track Department volunteer I'm afraid I don't know are in Barn 3. Our hardworking track volunteers have finished the complete rebuild of track 34! This was a marathon of a job that took a few months. Next comes some Buildings & Grounds work, so the freight train isn't coming back into this space quite yet, but this is a huge step forward.
That folks! Below, Bob on the left, Marcus, and ____ (help!).

4 comments:

Joel Salomon said...

Hi Randy and Frank,

The mystery trackworker may be Hunter O'Dell, who went to Penn State Altoona and volunteered with us at Rockhill for a bit. I heard he was volunteering at IRM. It sort of looks like him.

Joel Salomon

Randall Hicks said...

Thanks, Joel. Evidently your loss is our gain. Just to even things up, would you happen to need an Executive Director?

Anonymous said...

Sorry I missed it or forgot, what is the matter with the 1374? RE the 308 - I remember coming back from a long road trip to Dayton to ride vintage trolleybuses circa 1985, and having stopped in Noblesville, I made my way over to the woodshop and told Johnson that he ought to make a move as soon as possible to get the 308 because it was clear to me this museum was on its last legs as a trolley group. Johnson's eyebrows raised and the thinking machine got going. Well ITM survived a whole nother 35 years or so, but it was great IRM got the 308 well before that meltdown. O.

Frank Hicks said...

As far as I know, nothing is wrong with the 1374. Some astute person realized that if we ran three cars on the streetcar line during DOWT instead of four, we’d have a lot fewer problems with cars stacking up. So, this year only three cars were run (and this worked very well, I’d say). The 1374, with fewer seats than the others, stayed in the barn as a backup.