Summer-Like Sunday

Frank writes...

The wood train was out on Sunday enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Many thanks to Zach, who ran the train for the day, and Ashtin, who worked as conductor.

I snapped the above photo as the train was returning from its 3:00 trip. The Museum was offering "Take the Throttle" opportunities throughout the day, so three or four of the trips were operated (under Zach's supervision) by visitors who purchased TTT trips.

Joel, Matthew, and Good Nick were switching in the yards, I believe to get Charles City Western 300 into a spot where it can conveniently be retrieved sometime soon. We had a compressor armature rebuilt for the 300, so once that's installed, the locomotive will hopefully be back in service. As for me, I briefly helped Joel install a new spring on one of the 604's trolley bases. Above, all heads turn as the CA&E train makes its way back into the yards at the end of the day. That's Jimmy, Joel, and Will up on the roof.

Always a beautiful sight!

The locomotive for the switch move was ComEd 4, shown above moving the 1702. After the switch move, most of the guys headed out to the main line on the 604 (pulled by the 4). They were out there for a couple of hours doing line work. I helped Joel close up the CA&E train and then did some cleaning and paint touch-up on Shaker Heights 63, but didn't take any photos.

While I was at it, I snapped a photo of the Green Bay & Western car. It's starting to turn Pullman Green, giving us a taste of how sharp this car is going to look when it's done.

We were also sent some photos by our intrepid freelance photographer, Jeron Glander, who snapped these images on Saturday (which was Bus Day) and Sunday.

Above, here's Zach in the cab of the 319 on Sunday. In front of the car are two visitors from the Halton County Radial Railway near Toronto, Adam and Braxton, with Jeron on the right.

Here's a nice interior shot of the new bus garage, which just had its floor poured. It still needs electrical installation work before we can get occupancy, but this building will allow us to get all of our buses and trolley buses into indoor storage.

Here's a Dayton lineup along Railroad Avenue during Bus Day. The Skoda in front was built in 1998, while the Flyer behind it dates to 1977. IRM has three generations of Dayton trolley buses, but our 1947 Pullman isn't running.

And CSL 3407, our 1944 White gasoline bus, was out during Bus Day carrying passengers, possibly for the first time in many years - I'm not sure. Wes Lloyd (pictured) was driving it and has been working on getting the cantankerous thing working better.

Finally, thanks to Zach for forwarding a great drone video taken Sunday that shows the CA&E train in operation, along with the demonstration freight train that was run:

And this fascinating video was shot by Steven on the Saturday of Museum Showcase Weekend and shows the #2 truck on the 319. Pretty interesting! You'll note that this car doesn't have a circle iron for the brake rods like the other cars; there's a beam over the motor, near the truck bolster, that the brake rigging pulls to set the brakes. You can also clearly see the cable going to the truck to connect to the third rail shoes, though of course that's disconnected in the electrical cabinet.

See if you can ID all four of our meets - and figure out the two spots we lost a pole on this trip!