Frank writes...
These are excerpts from a tape recorded interview I did with Bob Bruneau on March 2, 2004. I've edited out my questions and some content not relevant to the interview.
Robert Bruneau,
talking about the last days of the North
Shore: We didn’t
steal from the railroad. Well, I don’t
think any of the museum guys did because stealing from the railroad helps put
them out of business. But once it was
the junk man’s and he was nice enough to leave all the low-numbered cars out across
the fence, then we helped ourselves. One
time I was there by myself, it was a weekday and we were already getting ready
to move [to Union]… I would get a ride home
Sunday night, and I’d recover Monday and get an oil change and all that stuff,
make up a Care Package and take the North Western back to Downey’s, which was
maybe a mile down the tracks, maybe not that far. I’d walk down the right of way and into the
gate, past all the cars – all the low-numbered cars, and even some of the
low-numbered 700’s, were in Pettibone Yard. And I’d go in that way. They had taken all the
trolley wire down but they were cutting the span wire down, pulling poles and
that. So I was going to lunch, probably
the next day or something – because after a while we had no electricity in back,
so if you bought a quart of milk and a box of cereal, the milk would be
spoiling by noon, you know, because it was not refrigerated. So I’d have to glug the milk down in the
morning. It was a pain in the ass, it was
probably a mile to walk in to breakfast, and I’d be too lazy to get up and you
didn’t feel like walking a mile. So I’d
get Wheat Chex or something – you could just nibble on those all day and smoke
cigars if you’d get too hungry. So the [scrap]
guy’s got all this stuff laying on the ground - west or north of North Chicago
Junction station there was always stuff laying down. They were cutting the span wire off from the
insulators. I went over and figured out
who the boss was – the guy who wasn’t doing any work was the boss. I says “I’m from the railroad museum, I’m
kind of interested in some of this stuff.”
I says “Can I have it?” He says “We’re
not in the giving away business.” He
says “What did you have in mind?” “Well,
this glass. You know, there’s no scrap
metal for that.” “Well, put it all in a
pile. And… when you coming this way
again?” So I’m going to eat, I’ll be
back in an hour [or] forty-five minutes.
He says “Pile it up and I’ll tell you what it is.” So they had about twenty things. I had to go back to the museum to get a bucket
for them, an empty bucket. ...“Five bucks
apiece for glass? You ain’t gonna get
nothing for it!” “Well if you want it,
that’s what it costs you.” You son of a
bitch, I’ll go out after you quit at six
o’clock at night and steal them.
So he figured that out too, so they drove over it with a bulldozer and
it was powdered glass.
But they had some four-wheel speeder flats,
you know, so there was one derailed on purpose down a ways. We put it on the track and then we’d go steal
switchstands. All these Bethlehem – or [rather]
New Bethlehem switchstands – what’s in [yards] five, six seven and eight. So we’d go down and all the rail was sledded
out and then the scraps were left – tie plates and spikes and
switchstands. So we’d go down with the
speeder flat and load them on there and bring them back. We had a lot of guys in those days so it was
thrilling, you know. There was a big
pile of ties by the fence at the foundry.
We left a ladder on top of them.
They were real close to the barbed wire so we could slide the ladder off
the pile of ties. So we put two ladders
down sometimes and a board, and then you could just tie a rope on these things
and pull them up over the fence and back your truck up to them. So they decided somebody was stealing all
that stuff, so they fixed us. They got
the torch out and cut all the handles off right in the middle. So we brought the handles back too! Marked them with chalk, you know – one, one,
two, two, three, three – and welded them back on.
They had old, real ancient old air-operated gates. The watchman’s shanty was about a story and a
half high, if you can imagine that [with a] DH-16 pump under the floor in there. So we decided we just gotta have these
gates. We’ll put gates up at Union someday, on the property. We bought this [truck], a little bigger than
a pickup truck, it had a crane on it. So
we’re out unbolting these gates from the ground, taking the unions off; there
was a door you could open up or something.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, here comes the cops!”
Well we bought this truck for seven hundred bucks – it said “North Shore
Line” on the door, you know – and we look like railroad guys, you know. So we’re really nervous about the cops, then
we’re REALLY getting nervous when the guy pulls up and stops. “Oh… just keep working!” And the guy flagged traffic until we got all
four of them! So then, by then it was
the end of the day, so we figured next week we’ll go back with the truck and
get the air compressor out of the base of the shanty. It was gone. One of the neatest things that
happened was – we had the two Commonwealth Edison engines, two cranes, and two
gons full of parts. They scrapped one
engine and two cranes, both gons of parts, they scrapped brand new
armatures. [Bill] McGregor and I were
throwing the field coils in the fire, taking all the mica and all that crap off
so we’d get more money for the copper. [Tom]
Jervan says “We’ve got to get one of these roof assemblies off a pup [North Shore
steeplecab]!” And they had kind of like
a dance floor on the top of their engines.
You could turn both poles around, and they were situated in such a way
that you could put them both up so you wouldn’t burn the wire. So Tommy’s a sailor and we found some ropes
in the old engine house, which was two tracks.
So we go in there, and Sheridan Road’s – well, there’s the North Shore
main line, which was [in] a cut, then you could see the North Western, and then
you could see Sheridan Road cars going by.
And we go in there with a cutting torch.
We burn all the things off without setting the building on fire, because
it was an old frame firetrap, full of grease and oil. [We] burn this thing off, two trolley bases –
it’s easier to take it out in one piece.
And I don’t know if you ever watch how cranes work on a ship. If you look at old ships they have the masts
where what they do is pick it up with one and then swing the other one out,
pick up on one and let it go on the other and pretty soon it’s hanging off the
one over the edge of the ship. So we got
two ropes rigged up, one on top of the engine near the outer end, near the door
of the barn. The door was not a door, it
was boards going up about eight feet high.
There was a pole out there, we had all these ropes rigged up… We get
this thing up and – there were some block and tackles we had, or we stole, or
were in there somewhere – hoist this thing up and we’re going over and Jervan’s
screaming like he always does, you know, and you’re letting out on this one and
it’s swinging over heading to go out over this wall in front of the engine and
all of a sudden the rope breaks and he rides the thing down. Crash! Horrible noise, you know, it was falling on
the end – on the hood of the engine.
BONG, BONG, boom, crash, boom, bang!
Tommy’s all beat up and everything and cuts and bruises – no bones got
broken. And somebody always had to pick
him up because he didn’t have a car in those days. [We] left all this stuff – I guess we took
the ropes down – and this thing’s laying against the wall up on the end of the
engine. Went back to the caboose, gave
him some first aid and washed all this stuff off, loaded him in the car, rang
the doorbell – “Here’s Tommy!” His
mother’s ready to have a heart attack! But we got the thing. I don’t know how we got it. And it came out here, sat in the field; well
by the time we got around to using it, it was all rotten, you know – all the
boards were used to laying in the mud.
[We were going to] put it right back on the Edison engine. But
that never happened. Maybe the trolley
bases are the same. There’s a big wood
fuse box and all kind of crap. We used
to go to a restaurant up there; it was a nice place, a small place. We used to go to – when they [the North Shore]
were running still, we’d go to this Mollinaro’s Tap which was kitty-corner from
the Edison Court
station, which was Waukegan. It [the station] was on the southeast corner
of the intersection between the street and the tracks and the saloon was on the
northwest corner. And all the guys lived
in there, you know, all the trainmen – it was all full of North Shore
guys. We’d always go in there and drink,
get pizzas and stuff. Some of the guys
that come out here liked it in there – they’d get the extra board job making up
and breaking up trains. I forget – they [trains]
kind of met right there. Between there
and North Chicago
they’d meet. If it was a northbound
train in the evening – let’s say nine
o’clock – it was a two-car train.
But they didn’t need a two-car train past Waukegan so they’d cut a car off. And soon thereafter the southbound train
would come and they’d add a car. And if
it was late enough, you know, then they’d just put it in the yard. But these guys were good – they’d know when
the train was coming. And they’d come
out of the saloon and knock a car off, you know, and get it over by the
crossover; the southbound train would pull in and they’d run it up and stick it
on. Now sometimes they got screwed – if
the northbound train was late, they’d have to get a car out of the yard. Well they always had one pumped up just in
case. But any distraction like that cut
into their beer-drinking time!
Well, after they were gone that bar was just about dead
then. Some of the railroad guys would
still go there and meet their friends but…
We’d go there at – Sunday night after the Museum. And they had a TV set; they usually had
interesting things on. And then
sometimes we’d go over to Bill Kehoe’s house, after we had something to eat and
a lot to drink sometimes… He had a model
railroad – not very good models. It was
a big dog-bone type of thing with a single track through part of it and a small
loop – smaller loop at the other end.
The loop was eight cars long. So
we’d all start running cars because he had signals and stuff and [we’d] watch
them. It was just on plywood, nothing
exciting. But he’d say “F--- playing
with these trains, I’ve got some serious drinking to do!” We’d bring beer then after awhile he’d get
out the Benedictine, which was really good.
And we’d be smoking these big fat cigars. And the house would really be – this was
before he was married. As each guy got
tired of playing with the trains, we’d couple it to the car in front of you or
the car behind you would couple on to you to keep going, you know. Pretty soon the thing would be running all by
itself; he had an Electroliner out there and then this eight-car train. He had a model of – an unpainted model of
Jesus Wept and No Wonder 312, which was kind of like [Illinois Terminal] 101
with an open obs end on one end.
...Jesus Wept and No Wonder – Jamestown
Westfield &
North Western! And he had a rubber cow sitting on the back platform of the obs
car, which had to be the last car of the train.
The cars would – when the thing would go around the loop the cars would
clear by about a quarter of an inch, you know.
He had a Milwaukee
streetcar seat in the basement. I think
we gave him on loan one of your baggage racks out of [Chicago Aurora
& Elgin]
321 and he died on us. The stuff’s still
in the family, I guess. Carl [Illwitzer]
and I hauled two vans full of stuff out of there. One day – actually, we went a third time –
and there wasn’t a lot of stuff, but we were waiting for the headlights and
stuff. More so marker lights, because
they all were stolen by then. Bill got
married after the North
Shore quit, got a job
with Commonwealth Edison. Or maybe he
got a job before they quit with Edison. He knew the writing on the wall, and all the
other electricians were going to be out of work. Yeah, I think he got a job with Edison in ’55. But
we still went over there. He was a good
Catholic, and he had three or four kids.
At least four kids. And they
moved to a big house in Gurnee and he built a better model railroad. So he died, and we went over there and hauled
a ton of hardware out – that [lit-up] stop sign up front [in Barn 4] and
everything.
And trolley poles, and – not much hardware, lots of oddball
hardware. And so the last time we went,
she says “I’ve got some lights for you.
Go down in the basement and I’ll be right there.” Nice lady.
Go down in this split-level house.
Jesus Christ, there’s switch lamps, and marker lights, and class lights,
and headlights – stuff that was never on the North Shore
even. Some signs… we’re just licking our
chops, you know. We parked in the
garage, and then you could just come out of the basement. Going into the garage to take this stuff
away; she pulled her car out. [She says]
“No, no, no, not those lights. These go
to Suzie, and these go to Carol, and these go to Jennifer-” you know. So we had to wait, and they all start showing
up about the same time, all but one. And
one gal, the oldest one, says “Ma, just give it to the guys at the museum,” you
know. “Oh, you’ve got to keep it to
remember Dad.” “Well I’ll never forget
Dad.” Well, so, we got eight or ten
pieces, a switch lamp; actually I got some tin boxes. They’re CTA things, and I forget what they
said but… Maybe one of them lit up when
the train was coming. They had CTA
switch locks on them. They were nothing
we could really use and since he was dead, you know, it would be nice to say
“well they came from Kostner
Avenue,” or wherever. But they had a lot of models too; we didn’t
take the models just because what do you do with it? You have to sell it. No place to go with it in the meantime. Well we got smarter as we got older. Bill’s parents lived in, like, in Waukegan, I don’t know
just where. I think on the north side,
but I don’t pay attention to that. I
just rode in the car. And that’s where
we used to play with his layout. When he
moved, he left this K-35 controller there.
And they still owned the house, and I guess they were renting it or
something. Or maybe she had lived there
and bought her own house. Bill would
have been dead several years by then. So
she’s selling the house, she calls up.
“There’s some of Bill’s stuff down in the basement. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll tell –” oh,
she says “Come on over, I’ll show you what it is.” So we go over, and oh f--- – narrow tiny
stairway, just wide enough for a K-35 controller. There was some stuff we took, there was some
model stuff which was left. We had to
come back. “Well, you’ve got to come
back by so-and-so time.” Well we
couldn’t get the truck but we arranged for the new owners – we had to meet them
when they got off of work. It took an
hour and a half, almost two hours because we were going against traffic going
to Waukegan. And of course it was a sleet storm and the
driveway sloped down to the street. We
had to take the two-wheeler, try to get it up the skinny stairs and then
turn. The guy was alright, he wasn’t
friendly but he talked, watching TV when we rang the doorbell – we actually got
there fifteen minutes early. We got
there about six o’clock, we just ate some hamburgers, wasted time. Got it outside – Carl and me – glazed ice on
the g--d---- driveway and his truck is there; we’re trying to boost this thing
up on the tailgate of the truck and sliding – you’d get it up partway and your
legs start going backwards! You know how
heavy they are – well, maybe 300 pounds.
But we got it.
Then they finally scrapped the engines. Well let’s see. One day we were casing the place out. We didn’t want to take a ladder over there because
it was too obvious [so we] took a shovel over there and dug a ditch – it was
all cinders so it was easy – so you could crawl under the wall. So Jervan was a clerk for the North Shore
– he worked at Highwood. So we’re in
there, we’re looking – yeah, we gotta get this, we gotta get that. We got this – three great big
twelve-by-twelves or something. We needed
them. Or we needed one of them for some
– to fix something, I forget what. You
know, to saw the end beam for a car or something. We hear somebody drive up – Jesus Christ, and
we’re quiet as mice, you know. The
engines are gone so it’s kind of a big empty room with stuff stored along one
wall. Mason and Sparky Shapler or
somebody else walked in. “What are you
guys doing here? Oh, YOU!” “We’re just looking around to see what we
want to buy…” “Yeah, sure! Well, tell you what you do. When you guys leave, lock the door!” There was nothing left to steal.
Well, he didn’t think so.
Finally we got 218 – well, let’s see, what happened? What happened was that the Museum owned most
of the stuff but [Frank] Sherwin bought three North
Shore cabooses; he owned the three
North Western baggage cars, you know, the storage car, the one up front and the
one they junked; and the [North
Shore] 218. And he had this McGuire-Cummings box motor
you could put snow plow attachments, or [rather] sweeper attachments [on]. So that thing had a Buda gasoline engine in
there. And so we figured out how to get
it to run, and there was a generator in there, or we took the generator out of
the generator shed and put it in the [car] – and it made electricity, 300
volts, but it made electricity. So we
coupled the two together, had a big alligator clip and reached out the window –
grunk! And it ran the 218! This was an unmotorized sweeper, see. So we’re running around switching with this
thing, and you had this stupid crane chassis that was always derailing. I think by now a lot of the stuff was gone at
North Chicago. And we had keys to the gate – you could come
in either from the northeast or go out the Navy yard. You were in the Navy yard for a thousand feet
then you went onto the North
Shore. The trolley wire went outside the fence on
the west side of the fence where we’d open the gate and go out. Well, so we fooled around with this thing and
did some switching. It’s starting to get
dark, the thing [is going] raarrr,
raarrr, raarr, you know – as it’s getting darker we could see sparks coming
out of the couplers and brake rigging and all – there was no ground. So the next week we had to get another big
alligator clip and ground the two cars together. You know, you put this bus jumper from the
frame of one car to the frame of the other car.
We got some hammers or something – the doors, the walls were
off of the engine house. We went into
the engine house taking all kind of stuff, clipping light fixtures off the
ceiling, all kind of crap. Stealing
little pieces of trolley wire and taking down barn hangers. And the next day I had to go to the North
Western to arrange another move. The guy
– his name was Mr. English. This was
Sunday night we were playing around over there and Monday morning I had to be –
to see this guy at nine o’clock. He says “I hear you were running on the old North Shore
last night!” I says “Well, to tell you
the truth… we were!” But I says, “We
weren’t doing any harm. How’d you find
out?” He says “There’s no secrets on a
railroad.” You know, a train must have
gone by when they saw us over there, the train crew, you know, [of a] commuter
train.
We stole this big log. It was a twelve-by-twelve, maybe ten
feet long. How do you move it? So we took trolley ropes off the cars, out of
the retrievers, you know, wrapped it around and you drag it down, two guys on
each rope pulling the thing down the rails, kind of sliding it. We’re doing this after dark; every now and
then a police car would come around but they couldn’t go anywhere, they
couldn’t drive down to the other end of the yard. Get it over there, drag this thing up the
fence – oh, they had a super wheelbarrow – big balloon tire and it was an
aluminum frame, the handles come out and had loops on them. It had an alemite gun on there for pressure
greasing stuff. We took the pot off and
it was a super wheelbarrow, it could really move stuff, especially in the
cinders. Big balloon tire, bigger than
what’s on our two-wheeler. You could go
places with it. So we had borrowed that… So we drag this thing up on the fence, over the
fence, onto the tie pile, throw on the ground, get the two-wheeler over because
we were always afraid someone was going to come and catch us – they’d catch us
with stuff that didn’t belong to us.
Wheel it over, and of course it got flipped over many times. In the morning the sun comes up, we go to
breakfast and then we look at our stuff – thing’s rotten on the bottom!
But the [North
Shore] 213 didn’t have
cowcatchers, which it still doesn’t have – we took those off and dragged them
down the tracks and over the fence and over the tie pile. That’s why I’ve got so many cowcatchers, then
we scrapped the [236] so there was another pair. But we were young, and… Across the way, maybe a quarter of a mile,
was the provost’s office for Main Side on the Great Lakes Naval Training
Station. So there ain’t much left to go
but we had just stolen a bunch of 80-40 rail, and here right by the corner of
the fence in the weeds was all these 80-40 angle bars, maybe fifty of
them. Well, so everybody – they’re not
that heavy, you know, maybe twenty pounds, maybe not that much – but now
they’re having trouble. Sailors are
coming down with big lights and there was a lot of AWOLs. In fact, they’d go over the fence and change
their Navy clothes into civilian clothes and then walk out the gate or go over
the fence. AWOL, you know, the first
eight weeks. You weren’t supposed to
have civilian clothes. And I think from
the time before we moved until after we were here about three or four years I
was wearing Navy clothes, and I’d have somebody’s name stenciled over the –
brand new, the most it could have been was eight weeks old. You know, new chambray shirts and blue jeans. But we decided okay – there was four of us,
we were going to throw these angle bars over the fence. Of course you throw one over – they’re all
right together, so one’s throwing them over and the other guy’s picking one
up. After about the third one, clang!
One hits the other one on the other side of the fence, and then clang!
Bells are ringing, pretty soon five cell flashlights are coming down the
tracks. Over the fence, pull the ladder
up. Get real quiet back in the back of
the Museum where we had all the lights on in the cars. One morning I got up to take a leak. There was three or four of us there, I don’t
know if Jeff Brady was one – I get up and I hear something. I look, and somebody runs away. I look, and there was kind of an empty field,
you know, the tracks kind of fanned out but they ran between the cars. It was a girl with a blanket, and she threw
her blanket over the barbed wire and went up over the fence like s--- through a
tin horn. She was working the
sailors. We stole the big electric
switch machine at South Upton, dragged it down
the rails with ropes. But it’s shorter
than two rails so one guy had to run along behind it pushing it, keeping it
balanced because it gets off balance and then this end’s hitting the ties or
that end’s hitting the ties. I don’t
know if we ever used it; it was painted silver, and I don’t remember seeing it.
