Get the Breeze at Luna Park

This has nothing to do with railway preservation as such, but it's an amusing picture of life in the good old days.  In the wall of the 1268, Tim found a crumpled-up copy of a multi-page guidebook put out by Luna Park, sometime between 1906 and 1909.  This was an amusement park located on the southwest side at 50th and Halsted.  It lasted only until 1911.  I think there were several of these parks in the city in the old days, but Riverview was the only one that survived into the modern era.

The following description of the park is priceless.  I'd like to see the "Human Roulette Wheel" or "Shooting Niagara" in operation.  They also had a miniature railroad, moving pictures, and flying airships!

"A trip through Luna Park is equivalent to a liberal education."   I'm not so sure about that....

They did have frequent band and orchestra concerts, with an impressive variety of popular and classical music of all sorts.  The guidebook includes lots of ads, mostly for liquor and cigars, it would seem:

There are two types of cigars: 5 cent and 10 cent.

Want to recuperate?  Take the Monon Route to French Lick and West Baden.  Hey, I've been there!

Of course, to get to Luna Park you'll want to take the streetcar.  The Surface Lines run everywhere!

You don't want just any old bourbon.  Get it from Mr. Fox:

Ask the waiter!

Anyway, once Main Street gets built, we should start putting in a human roulette wheel and flying airships at Electric Park.  It'll be a sensation!  Minus the bourbon and cigars, presumably....

Tuesday Report

Tuesday was another exciting, productive day in our fabulous, recently-expanded car shop.  Quickly:

 

Various parts of the 306 are being painted.

Work continues on the 1268.   Stay tuned for more interesting artifacts discovered inside the walls.  Meanwhile, I think Tim just ignores all the parking tickets he gets.

Here's the original pattern for the CA&E third rail hanger, alongside an actual casting.  Note that the casting will have to have a lot of material cut away.

Finally, I started making some new clips for the bolts in the third rail beams.  The rest of the work can be done at home.   And work is almost complete on the second third-rail beam (not shown).

Sunday Short Subject

Frank writes...

I didn't have as much time at IRM on Sunday as I normally do, and spent part of my time helping sort parts and move things around the shop as part of a general rearrangement, so I didn't get any photos of those activities.

I did trace numbers off the X4 and F305 and, after some resizing magic on the office copying machine, made up most of the stencil we'll need for lettering the CSL air compressor. I will need to recreate the "A" from photographs, but I don't expect it to be a problem.

So, what else was going on? Zach, Greg, Jimmy, and Good Nick were out on the line car for practically the entire day switching cross-arms and other hardware from old poles onto new poles along the main line. Joel was working on rearranging and sorting various things in the shop. My father had been out on Saturday and snapped the above photo showing the second third rail beam looking the part, in primer and with its hardware installed.

Tim was working on the 1268, and removing some of the sub-siding had revealed a small cache of paper that had fallen into the walls of the car early in its career when it had drop-sash windows. (This, of course, is a feature now being restored to the car by Tim.) It seems pretty clear that the car has not been disassembled to this point since it was built! Above you can see a pair of Chicago Railways cash fare receipts, with the one at least dated October 25, 1911.

And here's a batch of miscellaneous items. Tim is holding a Hershey's candy wrapper at top right; clockwise from top left are a picture of the Hershey Chocolate factory in Pennsylvania, a gum wrapper, something from the Palmer House, a balcony ticket, a business card from the Burrell & Heath Yacht Yard, a business card for Enoch A. Pearson (who worked in the Monadnock Building), and in the middle, a Garrick Theatre ticket from Saturday, May 31st, which Tim said dated it to either 1913 or 1923, but probably 1913. It can be easy to forget just how much unknown history is hidden in these old trains!

Steam Benefit Concert November 23rd

Jeff Calendine wrote to us and reminded us that the annual Steam Benefit Concert is coming up on November 23rd! Make sure to get a ticket here for your chance to see the incredible Sanfilippo collection and attend an organ concert on the mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ.

Jeff sent the flyer above, which gives you all the information about the event. Proceeds go to benefit the Steam Department, where the guys are currently hard at work putting the 1630 through a 1472-day inspection that will require replacing tubes and a bunch of other stuff, so all support is appreciated. Don't miss this year's concert!

High Beams

Not many pictures from Wednesday, I was too busy.  Like all of the others.  But a lot got done on the next third rail beam, as seen here.  Fritz in particular was a great help in several parts of this process, including cutting the notch into the beam.  Tim helped too.

I've been dealing with these things for a long time, and they are heavy.  We both remember the time back in 1998 when Frank and I drove out to Orbisonia to pick up two beams from the 315 that the trolley museum didn't need.  They were heavy then, but they're even heavier now.  This can only be due to some principle of physics with which I am unfamiliar.  For instance, I don't see how string theory could explain it.

Be that as it may, we're having some unusual weather in Barn 4.  Tim reports:

Look what the wind blew in!!

Just pull back the curtain, and the 28 starts rolling east.  Norm has to jump out of the way!  Luckily no one was hurt, and the car was brought to a stop and secured.   Whew!  Watch this space for further developments.

As I say, I didn't get many pictures of the other projects.  Gregg continued to work on the 109.

Our Usual Busy Selves

Monday was another busy day in the Car Shop, so I didn't get a chance to check out the various other areas in the Museum.  

Pete was finishing a door; I never got around to asking him where it goes.

 

John and Norm were discussing wiring on the 306.  And that's Gerry in the distance.  Work on this car is continuing at a steady pace.

And Norm is also hard at work getting the next two volumes of his monumental book on the Michigan Electric ready for the publisher.  I can't wait.

I'm not sure who's hiding under all that protective gear, but I suspect it's Tim, applying finish to new wood pieces with his typical efficient methods.

Fritz was working on the 28; here are some of the pieces he made to install the ceiling in the baggage compartment.

And here we see him attaching some parts.

Gerry and Phil are working on installing the stanchions in the 306.

Finally, I purchased some new wood and started making the next third-rail beam.  Two pieces were jointed, ripped, and then glued.  It looks just like the first one did.  Here the end is visible at left.  

For the first beam, since the fuses could not be dislodged from the shoe casting, I decided it was easier to just swap it out with another one, which has fuses pointing the right way.  And I also wanted to use longer bolts to hold it together.  And I attached the scraper to the shaft, so it's more or less complete.  Now it just needs a nice coat of black -- feel free!

Finally, while we're on the subject of third rails, someone brought in a rather tired CA&E third rail support.  It's badly rusted, but these things are hard to find.  And to think there used to be thousands of them.

Sunday Update

Frank writes…

My big news for Sunday, if you can call it that, is that painting on the 63 is now complete except for the roof (and RTA emblems, but I’m hoping those end up being stickers, like the originals, and not painted on).

I spent most of my afternoon putting a second coat of maroon on the stripes at the top of the car - the stripe along the roof line as well as the drip rail underneath the standee windows - after which the masking tape came off, and voila.

I still need to touch up the grey paint along the edges of the roof line and paint the center of the roof, where I can't reach from a ladder, but that's it. It's very far from perfect, but nevertheless I daresay the car looks better than it did when I started.

In other news, Mike S has been working hard on cleaning up our air compressor wagon, AX545. You can see that he's already wire-wheeled a good portion of the frame and sides.

Richard and I traced what lettering we could off the thing, though we weren't able to get a whole lot. It looks like standard CSL Roman, so I'm hoping we can "fill in the gaps" with lettering off the X4 and F305. 

Here's the badge plate off one of the "tanks," which are the pipes built into the frame, dating it to 1936. That's a good guess as to when this was built.

Speaking of AX545, our friend Art Peterson was kind enough to spend time looking through his photo collection and sent a few shots of CSL (and later CTA) air compressor wagons at work.

Here's a 1940 photo on State Street near Randolph, and in the left foreground you can see what looks like air compressor wagon AX509 (five-oh-something, anyway) about to be passed by southbound CSL "Big Brill" 5012. If you look closely, you can see the long stick that was used to provide trolley power to the compressor. At the end of the stick was some sort of fancy L-bracket-looking thing that sat atop the wire, which together with the stick being long enough to be angled way over to the side, allowed service cars to pass the compressor wagon without having to "hop" the pole.

This undated photo is a decade or so later, showing cars eastbound on Madison at Wacker. It looks like quite a crowd has gathered to watch the track gang at work! To the left of Pullman-built postwar PCC 4089, is air compressor AX5** with part of its number out of sight.

But here's the neatest shot Art sent. Not only is it in color, and not only is there a CA&E train in the photo, but it shows our air compressor wagon, AX545! This photo was taken by George Krambles on August 30, 1953, and it shows the loop at Desplaines Avenue under construction just weeks before CA&E service was cut back to this spot. In the left background is the Great Western station with a two-car inbound CA&E train in front of it.

A closeup of AX545 shows that at the time it had a wooden tray mounted to its roof, and it also looks like it had a reel or something where today there's an extra air tank. This also looks like it was before electric "marker" lights were added to the wagon. The number and CTA emblem are plainly visible. Pretty neat.

And it's only tangentially related to AX545, but Art also sent this photo, taken just moments earlier by George at the same location. This is the train visible earlier in the background, and what interests me is that it's a nice shot of the 457's roof as built, complete with three-across roof boards and sheet metal "skirts" hiding the saddles. Thanks, Art!

Back to Sunday, the regular crew of volunteers was working on a few different things after having spent their Saturday enjoying a spiced-ham-themed CTA fan trip. Brian L and I spent a little time investigating the 319's feed valve, which was acting up in September. We decided with some confidence that the locomotive-style (M3?) feed valve currently on the car is not correct for it, and that it ought to have a normal C6 feed valve the same as the rest of the wood cars. It's likely that what's on the car now was installed by Brookins. Fortunately, the pipe bracket appears to be the original one, so it shouldn't be goo big of a project to correct this grave injustice. We'll add it to the list.

Green Bay Car Progress

Thanks to our intrepid cub reporter, Gregg Wolfersheim, who has sent along an update of the latest news on Green Bay & Western 109, the passenger car that is still under restoration in Barn 4.

Here is the south side of the car mostly painted. This will not be the visitors side, so it isn't quite as nice as it could be. A little bit more work along the sill will finish it.

We see Jack trying to repair the north side sill area. At some point in the car's life, someone tried to repair it. Most of their work is rotted out now. What remains below it isn't much better.

At the west end of the north side, Jack was able to repair the sill. Here it's in fresh white primer.

In the middle of the car, the sill is starting to look better. This is the same area pictured earlier with Jack doing his magic.

Close up of what we're dealing with.

Back to the south side we see the bull nose edge of the sill. As built, the nose was integrated into the sill board as one piece. We don't have the time to replicate that right now. So, we're adding it by splitting a dowel rod into 2 half rounds. We then glue and nail one half to the edge of the sill board. A little epoxy to fill any imperfections, prime and paint!

End of the Month Report

We have more progress from Friday to report, and also a photo gallery from a side trip I'm sure you'll enjoy!  So don't touch that dial.

To start with, I cleaned up and installed the scraper cylinder for the third rail beam in the shop.  It's rather heavy and unwieldy, but it can be done.  It's not quite finished, but getting close.

And then it all got a coat of primer.  Apart from the fuses, it looks pretty good, if I say so myself.  The fuses are pointing in the wrong direction, and the bolt holding them is frozen, but I think with more Kroil and more torque it can be released.  And then everything will be painted black.

Tim was working on the 1268, of course, and today I got a couple of pictures.  The woodwork looks fabulous.  We talked about the dangers of these ancient baseboard heaters in a wood car.  I think the best solution is to disconnect the wiring so that they can't possibly be used, but he's not so sure.  

And of course, the other completed parts of the interior look just as good.

Gregg was working again on the 109.  He prefers to take his own pictures of the progress and mail them to us, so watch this space.  And as always, if you have an IRM project that you want publicized, send in your pictures and sufficient explanations, and wait for results.  Chances are, you'll be satisfied!  Or your pixels back.

Roger Kramer showed up in Barn 4 and was looking at the various projects.  He invited me over to his place to see what's going on, and that's something that I haven't done for quite a while.  Sorry!   So, let's take...

A Visit to Barn 10

Roger has several active projects, and the first we'll look at is the Palm Lane parlor obs, which was later used by a carnival company and modified, but they're working on a complete restoration.  It needs some body and fender work.  Here you can see where the body posts rusted out at the belt rail, and have been carefully trimmed for welding in new pieces.

The welding is being done by Marcus Ray, seen below with the boss.  This has got to be a tough job, but luckily we have volunteers who are up to the challenges.

This part of the interior is still in good condition.  It's a big project.

Next, we took a brief look at the Milwaukee Road buffeteria.  There are various things that need to fixed, but on the whole the car appears to be in good condition.

It was hard to get a good picture of the kitchen, which looks like most dining car kitchens -- long and narrow.  Working in this environment can't be easy.

And then they are working on the interior of one of the Rock Island cars.  It will look great.

Finally, we paid a visit to the dome car.

Replacing the damaged windows will be difficult and expensive.  The seating area at one end of the car has been completely gutted, as structural work is done

The other end is pretty complete, and shows what the interior will look like.

Update: 

Bob Albertson sends us a picture of the Swift reefer, which Buzz has just finished lettering: