CSL Women's Auxiliary Memento

Our old buddy and well-known band leader Ron Smolen sent me these pictures of a real CSL artifact: a dance card from a ball given by the Women's Auxiliary in 1923.  How many of you remember learning how to fill out a dance card?  ...not that there's anything difficult about it:

This particular lady seems to have spent almost the entire time dancing with Jim.  Hmmm...  And Ron says that he'd never heard of the Robbers' Onestep, but it must have been popular in 1923.  If only we had a time machine! 

Christmas Greetings

Madonna and Child

with St. Louis of Toulouse, St. John the Evangelist,

and Donors

 Davide Ghirlandaio, Italian

1486

On a marble pavilion that opens to the sky, Christ, his Mother, two saints, and two donors form a figurative pyramid, a hallmark of Renaissance composition.  The ethereal appearance of the holy figures makes a contrast with the earthly realism of the donors.

(I wish we could commission something like this for our donors!  :)

And then, holiday greetings from the grandchildren during their visit to Barn 9 back in July!

'Tis the Season

And you're never too old for toy trains...  I hope.  This year it's American Flyer Wide Gauge.  Almost everything here is between 90 and 100 years old.  Except me. :)

Happy Holidays!

Monday Brief

Monday was another busy and productive day in the car shop.  It was also the last day of Happy Holiday Railway, added to the calendar due to popular demand and the cancellation of one of the earlier scheduled days because of bad weather.  But as usual, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

And as usual, I was too busy to take many pictures.  Here we see a test installation of the scraper cylinder on beam #3.  In front, two new pieces of maple for beam #4.  These were later jointed, ripped, and slotted.

The cylinder needs to be cleaned up and painted before final attachment.

Later in the day, paint on the bottom of #3, while contestant #4 is being glued.

The other projects, such as 1268 and 306, continue to make progress.  A test application of a revised formula for the yellow paint on the 28 was pronounced a success.

Work continues on the Green Bay car.  And it was loud.

Gregg and Jack are really accomplishing a lot to be proud of!

Wood Shop Report

Another report on progress in the shop itself from Buzz!

I was surprised with a call that the lift screws we asked Eric to make were completed just a week after we removed the old ones. The new ones look fabulous.

The new nuts made from bronze slugs should wear better.

So on Monday with Tim assisting we put them in.

Tim was the brave soul to run the first wood through.

Finally had the time at the end of the day to finish a project I wanted to do for a couple years. Re-surface and seal the two central wood shop work benches.

It’s an essential clean space to lay out interior sash to be varnished, look at large blueprints, cut upholstery fabric, and other fine work, like eating lunch.

Sleigh Ride

Frank writes...

Sunday was the penultimate day of Happy Holiday Railway 2025, and although this year's event was impacted by both snow and extremely cold temperatures, in the end the whole things was very successful and our visitors seemed to really enjoy themselves. As for us volunteers, the 30-ish temperatures on Sunday meant one thing: it's time for our recent tradition of bringing out the one-truck open sleigh!

Our Veracruz open car, appropriately festooned with battery-powered lights, came out for a few trips at about 4pm. Many thanks to Good Nick and Mikey for working with me to get the car out of the barn (including moving North Shore 749) and operating it. Here, the car sits at Depot Street just after sunset with the president running and Lee and Jimmy conducting a check ride.

We ran it for about seven laps and put it away about 6pm or so. The regular heated cars, the 431 and 3142, stayed in service until after 8pm.

After that, I spent some time with the copying machine and drafting accoutrements to complete the stencils for the air compressor wagon. I didn't get a photo, but it is now completely painted in dark green, including the underside. Joel said it's ready to letter, which means I'm up! You'll note that it will receive a CTA, rather than a CSL, emblem. As a CSL fan, it pains my soul to do it, but the air compressor's current configuration matches its late-in-life condition with a crosswise air tank on the end and electric markers. As shown by our nice 1953 photo at Forest Park, that puts it squarely in the CTA era. So, we must be accurate.

Most of the focus over the weekend for the volunteers was on HHR, between making sure the trains were running, turning the lights on and off, and so on. But several of the guys were working on New Jersey 4. The car did get wyed, making access to the door side easier, and I believe there was a crew working on it both Saturday and Sunday. One wheel on the right side has been replaced - so that's five down and three to go - with the second in progress, awaiting replacement of those studs at the end of the torque arm.

I also did a little bit more work on that spare grid box, though nothing very photogenic, and I measured the clips we'll need to make to hold up the ribbon fuses on our new grid boxes. Note to self: the clips are 14-gauge steel strips, 1-1/2" wide and roughly 5-1/2" long apiece.

The Bill Sirinek Collection

The late Frank Sirinek was a long-time member of IRM whom most of us will remember vividly.  Besides all of the tremendous restoration work that he did, he took thousands of historically important photos of not only IRM, but other museums and transit operations across the globe.  His nephew, Bill Sirinek, has been hard at work scanning in all of Frank's slides and posting them on Flickr.  He has graciously given us permission to repost a few slides from the Sirinek Collection, but you need to get on Flickr and start browsing.  It's hard to believe.  I'll post just a few we've run across.

For me, the most striking photos (so far) are these pictures of the interior of the 309 dated March 7, 1971 -- just one week before the fire.  It was so close to being done...

You may notice some differences in the interior paint scheme, particularly the ceiling, from what it has now after restoration.  Back in 1971, the original intention was to restore it as it was at the end of service, in the red paint scheme.  The decision to restore it to the blue scheme was evidently taken after the fire, by Bob Bruneau and Bob Rayunec.

And then from a few years earlier in 1967, we have the Museum's CA&E collection on display.  The wood cars are sitting on what is now the west leg of the wye, after track expansion into what is now the central campus had started.

Looking north.  I guess that's Central Ave. in the foreground.

Looking northwest, from about where the pavilion is now!

Bill deserves a  huge thank you from the preservation community for making these available!

Recent Announcements

We realize there has been some online chatter regarding CA&E car 321. We can't say anything at this time other than that we have been in talks about plans for the car, but if and when there's any news we can announce, we'll most assuredly let you know.

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about the 321's history, click here.

Green Bay Car Update

Green Bay & Western 109 is, remarkably enough, still in the Electric Car Shop for restoration, and our intrepid cub reporter Gregg Wolfersheim has been kind enough to send us the latest account of progress on this wood coach.

The end beam for the 109 was set up in the steam shop for drilling. The big radial drill on the left made easy work of the 20+ holes! The 'Big Joe' lift was used to support the oak beam. This is basically a 10 foot switch tie we have to handle. Heavy!

A closeup showing some of the holes we drilled. The large hole is where the brake wheel shaft will go through. This will be the top side. Where the elongated holes are, will be the back side placed against the steel frame of the car.

Several nail holes were filled in with epoxy around the doorway on the east end of the car. This will soon be painted green.

Primer was applied today to the bottom and back side of the beam. Tomorrow it will get black paint. Then, we will be able to attach it to the car. Following that, a few more holes need to be added for the railing and some grab irons.

Jack was busy needle chipping and then wire wheeling the north step box today.

I followed by applying primer to the step box.

Monday Report

Working in our nice heated car shop goes along on weekdays smoothly without too much trouble from the weather, as long as you can actually drive to the property.  I was working on the next third-rail beam, and cut the notch (with some help from Fritz), drilled all the holes, and gave it a first coat of primer.

But the new beam for the end platform on the Green Bay car is even bigger and heavier.  It looks like it's getting done also.  

The 306 guys are working steadily to complete the wiring and other mechanical systems on the 306.  Here Gerry is underneath the car with Fred helping.

And work continues on the Michigan Electric 28.  I didn't get a picture of the work in progress, because I was busy on my own project, but the front compartment is coming together.  

I'm told a test application of orange paint to the front of the car revealed that the color still isn't quite right, so it will be remixed by our paint master Pete Galayda.

And of course Tim continues his work on the 1268.

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!

Nothing Could Be Planer

 Buzz reports:

Our Yates B-244 planer, a newer wood shop machine from 1960, has worn out lift screws and nuts. With no spares around, Eric H. from the Steam Shop has volunteered to machine new parts from scratch.  (Ed.: That's Eric Hoyem.)

Here he is removing the old screws.

It’s nice to have resources like Eric to keep us going.

(Ed.: And I might add that this planer is absolutely essential to serious woodworking!)