Arctic Circles

Frank writes…

The good news was that, for the first weekend in 2025, Happy Holiday Railway wasn’t impacted by snow. The bad news was that the high temperature was about 10 degrees both days this weekend. But the show went on, and the visitors I spoke with were in good spirits. I showed up in uniform ready to work as "streetcar line relief," i.e. giving the day's streetcar motorman an hour-long lunch break, but it turned out the regular motorman had to leave at 5pm. So, I ended up running the 3142 in circles from 3pm until it went back to the barn around 8:30pm. It was chilly, but still, it's hard not to like spending a day on the Surface Lines!

Here's the 3142 at Central Avenue, ready for passengers. There were two cars on the streetcar line, the 3142 and CA&E 431, and we ran a simpler-than-normal operation by virtue of not stopping at Electric Park or Springfield Avenue.

The platform heaters to the left and right of the motorman do work, as does the heat throughout the 3142, but the car's heat is a bit anemic. Still, it was a lot warmer inside the car than outside! As you can see, this car is fittingly equipped with a prominent aluminum pole, and it's IRM, so of course feats of strength and the airing of grievances are a given.

I had a few trips that were sparsely patronized, but then there were also trips where we were completely full and turning people away - generally those were departures from Depot Street right after the Santa train had pulled in.

Zach Ehlers took the above photo, of me running the 3142 along the streetcar line east of the ruling curve, and the below photo of the 431, while he was out turning on the Christmas lights. As it got dark, the big attraction became seeing all the nice light displays at the south end of the museum from the streetcar.

Here's the 431 at South Junction. Two weeks ago, service was held down by the 3142 and the 749, which was nice if for no other reason than you had the "red car" and the "green car." Very festive of us!

And here's the view out my window at the end of the night as the last Santa train of the evening pulled into the station around 7:45. The 431 was run all day by Gregg, with his conductor Dan visible there on the right.

So, what else was happening?

Mike S. has been hard at work on the air compressor wagon, AX545. The priming is done, at least as far as I can tell, and now he's applying a fresh coat of CSL work car green. It's looking great! I had hoped to finish the stencils for this thing, but a half-day stint in service put off those plans until next week.

Here's another view of the compressor wagon.

It's hard to tell, but the above view shows the front truck of NJT 4. The guys were able to finally extract the last two intransigent bolts from the front wheel and install the wide-tread wheel, so the car now has four wide-tread wheels on its left side. They want to wye the car, since there's a lot more space on its south side than its north side right now. In the meantime, they put it over the inspection pit and on Sunday started doing some inspecting. The news was not good: the MG set and the first traction motor they meggered are both grounded. Regardless of the condition of the other motors and miscellaneous equipment, though, we plan to put the other four wide-tread wheels on the car so it can be towed around. Watch for news on that in the near future.

This is not the same side of the 1268 I photographed last weekend; a week ago, this side of the car was down to the sub-siding! But Tim has been making progress at his usual breakneck pace, and both sides of the car now have a complete set of brand-new tongue-and-groove siding installed.

And finally, these last two photos were sent in by Brian LaKemper, showing those grid box covers that he and Zach were working on lettering a few weeks ago. They're finished and now installed in the Class B, where they guard against accidental contact with the grid boxes. Brian pointed out that now all the rest of the interior equipment suddenly looks shabby by comparison!

Of course, there were other guys out. Greg, Brian, and Jimmy were working on the aforementioned testing of NJT 4's electrical equipment. Richard was running the "food donation bus" at the museum entrance and Joel and Good Nick spent much of their time helping with various event functions to help HHR run smoothly. Many thanks to all the volunteers who came out in the extreme cold to make it all happen!