More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About "Streamer Sash"

Many wooden interurban cars, and even some of the earlier steel cars, were adorned with graceful arched stained glass windows on the exterior, a design feature copied from steam road passenger cars of the time.  All of the wooden cars on the Chicago Aurora and Elgin had this feature when built, and that's what this article is about.  On the CA&E these exterior windows were called "streamer sash"; I don't know where this term came from.  But the streamer sash show up in pictures, and have been a favorite subject of CA&E fans ever since the preservation movement started.

The "shorties" as built (both Niles and Stephenson) had upper sash that appear to be one large pane of milk glass.  This lasted a relatively short time, and it's easy to see why.  Once the glass developed a crack, as could easily happen in regular service, the entire pane had to be replaced.

But in later years these were replaced by exterior upper sash with leaded windows with fairly small panes, in a regular pattern as seen below.  This design is much more robust, as has been demonstrated with interior leaded sash windows.  

And as it happens, we have pictures of both of the preserved short cars with leaded streamer sash:

Later orders of cars were built with the leaded streamer sash.  This is a picture of the 309 in the 30's, and as far as I can tell the car still had its as-built windows.

The Kuhlman cars had a distinctive pattern:

Here are some good pictures of Jewett cars with their original streamer sash:

However, the streamer sash were evidently a maintenance headache, and starting in the middle 30's all of the wooden cars were rebuilt, with the arched windows removed and replaced by wooden construction, of a few different designs.  All of the streamer sash were removed by about 1945, as nearly as we can tell.  (This doesn't apply to the ex-North Shore cars, but they were all scrapped by 1953.)

And as best as I can determine, all of the CA&E streamer sash windows were discarded; there are no original examples still in existence.  I would love to be proven wrong about this, but that is what the available evidence indicates.  Further information would be welcome.

(And as a side note, it is certain that all these windows were removed and replaced with wood, not just covered over as happened with the IT interurban cars, for instance, where they are still in place but covered by sheet-metal plates.  This obviously makes restoration of the CA&E cars a more difficult challenge.)

And therefore all of the preserved CA&E wooden cars were acquired by the various museums without their streamer sash, of course.

Now we get into the realm of controversy.  Most preservationists over the years seem to agree that removal of the arched windows was an esthetic disaster, and from the first, many have wanted to rebuild the preserved wood cars by reinstalling streamer sash. But with no original windows available, what do you do?

The most obvious solution was to acquire interior arched windows from the few cars that had them, at least those which were not being preserved.  And here we can start counting windows almost precisely.

Exactly 13 CA&E cars had interior stained glass windows, cars 309 to 321 inclusive.  These cars were from three different builders: two from Hicks, five from Kuhlman, six from Jewett.  And the interior stained glass windows in these cars were of three different designs.

Hicks interior window

Kuhlman interior window

Jewett interior window

Eight of these 13 cars went into preservation, all keeping their interior windows.  The other five (310 to 314) were scrapped at Wheaton.  B105 lists the 312 as being retired in 1959, so it probably was scrapped before 1962.  But it appears that all the rest had their interior upper sash removed by museum people first.

The 310's windows, a complete set, were acquired by IRM.  They were originally intended for installation in the 309 as exterior windows, but this never happened, of course.  After the fire two of them were used to replace ones in the 309 damaged in the fire, and the rest are still in storage.  Thus all of the Hicks interior windows are accounted for.

That leaves three Kuhlman cars.  A complete set of Kuhlman interior windows was acquired by Rockhill, with the intention of installing them on the 315 as exterior windows, and this has now been done.  Another set, more or less complete, was acquired by IRM, and some of these windows were probably acquired by individuals; about eight were still in storage by 1998.  We then traded four of them to Rockhill in exchange for third-rail beams.  (The four interior windows in the smoker of the 315 had been removed by the CA&E.)  Another complete set was evidently acquired by Fox River, and they are now planning to install these on the 316 as exteriors.  [Update: as of 2026, this has been done.]  And that accounts for all of the Kuhlman interior windows.

All six Jewett cars were selected for preservation.  The 316, 317, 319, and 320 still have all their interior windows intact.  The 321 was acquired to be scrapped for parts, and the interior windows were removed in 1962 and either sold or distributed amongst the members; a couple of these are now still in IRM's possession.  When the 318 was scrapped by IRM in 1979, all of its interior windows were acquired to enable the restoration of the 321, and they are now in storage.  So that accounts for everything except a few from the 321 that may still be floating around.

  

The problem with using interior windows on the outside is that all of the interior windows are a completely different design from the exterior streamer sash, although the Jewett interiors are somewhat closer than the other two.  This is easily seen from the pictures included in this article.  It changes the exterior appearance noticeably from what it was historically, and it's a matter of judgment, I suppose, how important that is to the people involved.

The only alternative is to have new streamer sash fabricated, using the available B&W photographs as a guide. This is expensive, but the results are much more historically accurate.  Mount Pleasant did this when the 320 was restored to its appearance during the 20's.  This particular aspect of the restoration was very well done, in my opinion.

So that's the current status, as far as we know.  As usual, comments and questions are welcome, but please, in view of the subject matter...

don't throw stones!!!

More Pictures from Indiana

Bill Stewart continues with archival material from Indiana:

3]  Here is the 318 in its awkward Westport role as a “steam road” coach trailing its tiny companion, 0-4-0 11.  The 11 came from a sand and gravel company in western Indiana.  (Ed.: The 11 is still on display at French Lick as seen here.)

4] And now the scene of greatest interest to people at IRM: the September 20, 1964 Anderson Railroad Club excursion from Anderson to Westport and return.  The nearest of the North Shore cars in the train is the 172, the other is the ill-fated 154, and the third (left) is said to be a 250-series combine, its later ownership or circumstances of demise unknown.  (Ed.: That must be the 250, which was later acquired by IRM and scrapped for parts at Union in 1995.)  Barely visible behind it is box motor 228, now at East Troy.  The NYC GP-7, still in its original pin-striped paint scheme, would itself qualify today as a worthy railroad museum artifact.  The president of the Anderson Railroad Club, Bill Somebody, was a local Chamber of Commerce official and railfan.  He died suddenly at a young age and the club folded after only three years (1964-67).

More Cars That Got Away

Our friend Bill Stewart recently found some interesting archival material to share with us.

He writes:

1) The fuzzy qualities of this photo of our late friend, CA&E 318, seem to suggest that this is a historic image.  To the contrary: it was taken at Westport, Indiana in the 1960s.  The car is spotted on the “main line”of the former Indiana Railway Museum -- the final few yards of the Milwaukee Road’s Indiana extension, which interchanged here with the New York Central’s Louisville-Elkhart secondary main line, visible to the left.  (Ed.: The 318 was heavily damaged in transit in 1971, and purchased by IRM in 1977 to be scrapped for parts.  The parts have been used to restore other cars.)

2) In a photo that has to date to 1969, for reasons to be provided below, the friendly face of the 318 leans over to smile at the happy crowd on the platform of Penn Central business car 180.  But how could that be?

Explanation:  In 1967 or 1968, the late Brigadier General Robert Moorhead, Commander of the Indiana Army National Guard, began a private initiative to save his favorite passenger train, the NYC’s Cincinnati-Indianapolis-Chicago “Deluxe All-Coach Streamliner,” the James Whitcomb Riley.  Moorhead created the Riley Booster Club, Inc. as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, hired part-time staff, paid for newspaper and broadcast promotions, and began buying surplus NYC rolling stock from the nearby Beech Grove Shops to use as excursion cars attached to the regular Riley consist.  Moorhead owned Central Publishing, Inc., a large Indianapolis printing company, and printed promotional materials for the Riley that were distributed through travel agencies and other sites.  To share information and human resources, the Booster Club came to operate as an extension of the Indiana Railway Museum.  Eventually the lightweight car fleet filled two tracks at the former Pullman Company Capitol Avenue Coach Yard, adjacent to Indianapolis Union Station.

In one of the newly-formed Penn Central’s many quirky moves, Pennsylvania Railroad business car 180 (equipped, interestingly, with four-wheel trucks instead of the usual six-wheel variety typically specified for heavyweight cars) was repainted in the PC’s new green-and-white paint scheme, assigned to a New York-based VP, then retired within a year and laid up at Beech Grove.  General Moorhead purchased the car for a nominal sum and stored it temporarily at Westport while arrangements were being finalized for use of the Capitol Avenue Coach Yard.  The car later operated on several long-distance excursions, including a memorable 1970 Indianapolis-St. Louis round trip on the rear of PC trains 31 and 30, the Spirit of St. Louis.

In this Westport scene, however, it is serving only as a viewing platform for a crowd that came to ride a two-mile round trip aboard the 318, pulled by a little 0-4-0 tank engine.  Even the smallest of those kids is now a “mid-century” adult, age 50+.

After the arrival of Amtrak, operational changes made private car operation from Indianapolis increasingly impractical.  General Moorhead sold the 180 to an individual in Kansas.  But that did not turn out well, and the car was later scrapped.  Too bad, because as older photos indicate, it was once a most handsome car.

Ones That Got Away - Speedrail

When the remaining interurban operations of the Milwaukee Electric system were about to be abandoned in the late 40's, an investor from Cleveland named Jay Maeder bought them from the Greyhound bus line which had purchased the railway, and tried to keep the trains running under the name "Speedrail".  Maeder was a railfan as well as a businessman, and it would appear that perhaps the company was founded more to give him a full-sized electric railroad to operate than to make a profit.  During its brief existence, Speedrail acquired a large and interesting roster of historic equipment, mostly from TM but from several other railways as well.  Operations started in September 1949.

It did not last long, and the tragic end is well known.  On Labor Day weekend of 1950, Maeder was running a special train over the system for the NMRA, with himself as motorman.  A mixup in orders resulted in a head-on collision between the special and a regular service train.  Ten people were killed and many more badly injured.  This caused a drop in ridership as well as huge damage claims, and the company never recovered.  Operation continued, with more wrecks, until mid-1951, and in early 1952 the entire remaining roster was scrapped.  There was no organized museum movement in this area at that time to save anything, and the list of the ones that got away is another sad example of missed opportunities.

Speedrail in general seems to have been a disaster in terms of safety.  Several pieces of equipment were wrecked at various times.  I've heard people say that Maeder tried to run a rapid transit line like a museum, but that's not fair to most museums.  IRM certainly has a far superior operation in terms of safety to anything like this.

A badly-dented wreck victim in regular operation

Photos courtesy of the Mewhinney and Don Ross sites.

Summarizing the Speedrail roster, from the CERA TM book (B-112):

Passenger Equipment:

1) Ten light-weight articulated trains, built by St. Louis in 1930 for TM.   Two were wrecked during 1950, and one was the NMRA special.

2) Seven single-end lightweights from Shaker Heights, originally Indianapolis and Southeastern  (see above)

3) Two double-end lightweights from Shaker Heights, originally Aurora Elgin and Fox River 300 and 301

4) Two single-end lightweights from Lehigh Valley Transit, originally Dayton and Troy

5) Sixteen of the TM 1100's (Kuhlman 1909, rblt 1924).   Three were wrecked at various times and scrapped; only one remained in service by the end.

6) Ten of the TM 1100's (St. Louis 1907, rblt c. 1924)   One was wrecked.

7) Eight articulated trains built by TM from Indianapolis and Southeastern heavyweight cars.  One was heavily damaged in the NMRA collision and scrapped.

8) One single-truck Birney from KCPS, probably purchased by Maeder privately, never used.  See below.

Work Equipment, all from TM:

1) Two snow plows

2) Two line cars

3) A ditcher

4) Two snow sweepers

5) A box motor, miscellaneous freight cars, etc.

 6) Update: A "tank motor" or sprinkler

And two of the 1100's were used as freight motors at various times.

Only two pieces on this roster escaped scrapping.  The most interesting is the Kansas City Birney 1545.

  It's unlikely that Maeder intended to use it in regular service, of course.  When Speedrail came to an end in 1952, the nearest operating electric railway museum was ORM, and he donated it to them.  It was moved to Worthington in June of 1953. ORM was one of the earliest operating trolley museums and 1545 was soon repainted and operational; for a time, before ORM built its bridge over Route 161, 1545 ran on an isolated stretch of track south of Route 161. After ORM began its long decline in the mid-1970's, 1545 was heavily vandalized and damaged by arsonists.

KCPS 1545 as of May 1980, in sickening condition. :(

 In December 1982 the car was sold to the Fort Smith Trolley Museum, which stripped it of its truck, motors and control equipment to restore Fort Smith Birney 224. The body has been retained intact and is in storage.

The second is line car D22, which was returned to the Lakeside power plant before the end of Speedrail.   Like most of the remaining TM work equipment, it became part of the TWERHS collection at East Troy, and was acquired by IRM in 1988.  It's in storage, in poor condition.

The body of car 1138 was shipped to Maeder's home in Ohio after the end of Speedrail, but without the trucks and motors, which were scrapped by mistake.   Maeder had intended to preserve it, but when it was found that he didn't get the complete car, the body was eventually scrapped.

Scrapping cars at the Waukesha gravel pit

From the standpoint of 70 years later, we can only speculate on what might have been available for preservation if Speedrail had lasted longer with a better safety record.  First of all, we'd want one or more of the 1100's with their original trucks, motors, and electrical equipment.  Only two TM interurbans survived, and they were both heavily modified by the London & Port Stanley.  And the articulated trains, both the heavyweight and lightweight versions, were unique to TM, and nothing like them has been preserved.  (Well, apart from the Key System bridge units.  Insert smiley.)  Then there are the Cincinnati curved-side cars, which are very rare.   And nothing from either the Dayton and Troy or Indianapolis & Cincinnati has survived.  On the other hand, a good selection of TM work equipment was preserved, independent of Speedrail.

Well, we could go into greater detail on everything, but that's enough for now.   Corrections, as always, are welcome.

Ones That Got Away - CSL Wish List

Dick Lukin continues:  [my notes in brackets]

Not only the cars I mentioned before, but I wanted to buy one of the cars which went to Downers Grove [ERHS], the railroad roof wood 2846.

The 2846 in work service (Mewhinney)

The sweeper was $437.00 [the E223, which Dick did purchase] but the 2800's price was around $850... money which no one else had at the ready.

Dick Lukin at left in 1959, with the E-223 at North Chicago (Mizerocki)

Also gone and forgotten were other great work cars like the line car!  I think the CSL had only the one line car [V-201]:

(Don Ross)

 and there was the  HUGE  Supply car  [S-201] which sort of hung out at Burnside, as I used to see it on occasion.

(Don Ross)

We also missed a  despised car... a 5700 "Muzzleloader"!

A muzzleloader  (Scalzo - Mewhinney)

Why the Chicago City Railways ordered these stupid, slow  cars and used them on one of the busiest cars lines... for ever.. was always a mystery to me.  Since I lived only feet from Cottage Grove Ave, we had a choice of riding them, or waiting for  a 169--Broadway #1  or a 5600 off of Stony Island.  Easy choice.

Another muzzleloader on the Windsor Park line, at 93rd and Baltimore (Scalzo - Mewhinney)

But here again it comes down  to the  basic problem.   NO MONEY!

Tales of How They Got Away

Our friend Dick Lukin, one of the longest-term members of the Museum, sent us these wonderful recollections on CSL cars that didn't get saved:  

 I was active at IERM and IRM in the late 50's and early 60's and the status of the North Shore 202 was an issue.  The car body was just a pile of kindling... in the opinion of most of us!  A major  policy at IRM at the time was to NEVER acquire a car unless it was  complete... i.e. weatherproof,  with good motors, etc, etc.  Naturally some cars did come less than perfect.

   

Typical CSL Sedan (Volkmer - Mewhinney)

The thinking of the Board at that time was that IRM was a museum for INTERURBAN cars, and streetcars were not of primary interest.  (I personally was against this thinking.)  In the middle and late 1950s when the CTA was burning cars like crazy at 77th, we at  IRM really missed out on many significant Chicago cars.  For instance, CTA had remodeled a group of Sedans from two man to one man configuration for use on 63rd.  The aldermen along 63rd raised all kinds of hell and wanted NO one-man cars.  CTA said OK, so they got one man buses instead.  All of the refurbished Sedans were promptly shoved out to the burn track, and so we missed out on a Sedan.

5651 (Don Ross)

A few years later one evening, while showing slides, we noticed that on the "ready to burn" track  at 77th street shops there was the ONLY remaining car of the 5651 series.  None of us knew that the car even existed, and we wondered where the car had been living all those years, unknown to any one.

"Out to Pasture" area at 77th Street Station (Bowlan - Mewhinney)

Also at 77th street shops, on the north side of the paint shop, there was a STEPHENSON single truck body!  That body was used as a change-up room for the paint shop crew to hang their clothing.  Al Williams and I "liberated" the cast brass builders plates and the bells, indeed at midnight in about 1958.  I have one builder's plate right here on my desk, and one of the bells is at the museum!

Al Williams and I both lived on the south side of Chicago, he  in Englewood in a huge old house, and I in South Shore.  He could use his dad's Ford, so we used to go to CTA South Shops (yes, nearly midnight) and "liberate" select car parts from cars awaiting the torch.

Please note especially the two destination sign boxes at each end of 3142 and the route sign boxes. All four items were liberated in one night's mission along with many other items of interest.  The sign boxes were stored in my garage in South Shore until the early 1960s along with a panel truck load of other "goodies".  Eventually even the panel truck was donated to the museum.  It showed up in a few Rail and Wire issues! 

We missed out on any one man MU cars, and while we have the 144, we are missing a 500 high-speed from Milwaukee Ave., some of which ran  on Ashland before going up in smoke!

Yep, we missed out a some nice stuff, but I'm grateful for what we do have and the fantastic results that all of our hard work and money produced. 

  Dick Lukin  

Ones That Got Away - Illinois Terminal

Streamliner on the line to Peoria  (Scalzo - Mewhinney)

When the Illinois Terminal ended mainline passenger service in 1956 and electric suburban service in 1958, preservation of the equipment seems to have been a rather haphazard process, compared to what happened several years later with the CA&E and North Shore.  Some cars were donated to MOT, some were purchased by the Illini Railroad Club, two by Bob Bruneau, etc.

PCC crossing N. Market St. in St. Louis  (Volkmer - Mewhinney)

Two groups of cars that were thought to have possibilities for further service were the eight 300 series streamliners and the eight double-ended PCCs in the 450-457 series. They were at first stored on the Hawthorne Coal tracks in St. Louis.  Here they suffered vandalism and were inhabited by derelicts.  They were then moved into the subway, but that made the situation no better, and the damage continued. 

After end of service, but apparently before vandalism started.  (R. Hill photo, Mewhinney)

We do not have numbers, but the railroad presumably wanted to sell either or both groups of cars as a complete set at a substantial price.  Of course the fledgling railway museums and private individuals who might have been interested in purchasing one or two cars for preservation could not possibly acquire a complete group.  About 1964 Red Arrow considered purchasing the PCCs for their Ardmore line, but they were already in very poor shape after six years in storage, and the line was converted to bus instead.  (Mewhinney)

At that time, PCC cars 450 and 451 were bought by a private individual, who then donated the 450 to the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington, and the 451 to the Connecticut Railway Museum at Warehouse Point.   They're both still in existence.  It's fortunate that at least these two were saved, as double-ended PCCs are very rare.  Other PCCs, of course, are common in preservation

About 1966, the remaining cars were purchased by Biermann Iron and Metal, a St. Louis scrap dealer, whose material yard was located next to, and in the shadow of the approach to the McKinley Bridge.    The other six PCC cars were scrapped.  

451 on last day of service - Mewhinney

The streamliners, on the other hand, were unique and the final interurban cars built in America.  But Biermann put a high price on them and was never willing to negotiate a price that IRM or anyone else could afford, in spite of their badly deteriorated interiors.  The bodies sat in the scrapyard just below the IT main for many years, and there are several pictures of them in books.  The last one was not scrapped until sometime in the 1980's, although by that time they were empty shells and any thought of restoring them had long passed.

This happens more often than it should, perhaps: the owner of something more or less historic has his own inflated idea of its value, and is unwilling to listen to offers, even though the only alternative is to scrap the item, or let it rust away until it's worthless.  I can think of several other examples of this, and probably you can too.

Ones That Got Away

A few weeks ago somebody suggested listing "ones that got away."  That's actually not a bad idea.  Times being what they are, we don't have much current news to report, so we might as well talk about the past....

If we're discussing equipment that just barely missed being preserved, one of the first things that occurs to me would be the North Shore wooden passenger cars.  The North Shore had a nice selection of wooden equipment in its early years, but due to replacement by the great steel fleet, and a severe drop in business during the Depression, the wooden interurban cars were removed from passenger service by about 1935.  This was before the railway museum movement got started, but still there were three separate opportunities to preserve at least one wooden car.  These went from good to fair to wretched, but sadly they all failed.

300 at North Chicago - Mewhinney

The first opportunity was coach 300, which had been relegated to sleet scraper duty but was otherwise unchanged.   About 1938 it was offered to the CERA to use as a business car and occasional fantrip vehicle.  It was repainted and relettered, but otherwise kept in original condition.  It was used on several North Shore fantrips until the start of WWII.  Pictures of it at this time are plentiful.

300 fantrip in Waukegan - Mewhinney

But when the war started and most of its members went into the service, the CERA was no longer able to take care of the 300, and the railroad found a different use for it in the wartime rush.   It became a locker room for the female train employees for a while.  It was later vandalized and deteriorated rapidly, and was stored out of use.  At the end of the war the car was in bad shape, and the CERA evidently felt unable to restore or maintain it.  In 1945, I suppose nobody yet realized just how much volunteers could accomplish.  The body was used as a diner for a couple of years, then scrapped.

Car 137 in service - Johnson

Opportunity #2 was a group of twelve North Shore cars that had been leased to the CA&E back in 1937.  At Wheaton they were heavily modified.  The couplers were raised, the hot water systems were changed to electric heat, bus jumpers were installed, the sanders were removed, the control system was modified, and so on.   They operated on the CA&E until September 1953, when service was cut back to Forest Park and they became surplus.  Although they had been greatly changed, most of them were at least still complete and serviceable, but no one seems to have tried to preserve one at that time.  IERM acquired its first car in December 1953, and that was sufficient for the first two years or so.  So all twelve ex-North Shore cars went to scrap in 1954.  This was not as good an opportunity as the first, but still entirely feasible, if perhaps the timing had been different.

Car 137 on the scrap line - Johnson

The final opportunity was even more problematic than the others.  Car 202 was built in 1909 as a combine, but it lasted in this service only about seven years, until the first steel combines arrived.   It was then rebuilt into an MD car by removing the seats and installing additional baggage doors at the #2 end.  It remained in occasional MD service until after the war, by which time it was rather deteriorated.  Frank Sherwin acquired it and used it for storage at the foundry.

202 at North Chicago in 1959 - Mizerocki

The decrepit body was later used by IERM, as seen above.  In 1964, it was moved by truck to the new property at Union, where it sat in what is now Yard 5 for many years.  It was partly repainted, but continued to deteriorate.

  

202 at Union - Schmidt

Finally, on the point of collapse, it was scrapped in early 1974, the last North Shore wooden passenger car in existence, although a rather miserable existence at that.  But you can't win them all.

Well, I hope that wasn't too depressing.  We all know this is a very challenging business, and the successes far outweigh the failures.  Suggestions for further installments are welcome!