Paint Shop Records

Here's a sample page of the CA&E paint shop ledger book from Wheaton Shops, now in the Ralph Taylor collection. There's a new page for every time a car was brought into the paint shop.

Here we see car 36 being repainted on the outside in 1950, in the final paint scheme of Brilliant Red and Aurora Gray. The interior was only touched up. This page includes accounting information; the job took a total of 99 man-hours, a typical result if little was done on the interior. Hester and Miller were veterans by this time, so they knew what they were doing. You can calculate that Hester made $1.59 per hour and Miller made $1.56. The whole process took nine days, which is pretty fast. Sometimes a car might be in the paint shop for more than a month.

The book starts in 1936; presumably there was an earlier volume which may not have survived. It comes to an abrupt end in December 1956.

Our thanks to Ralph for making this information freely available; it's been a great help in restoring the cars correctly.

Blazing (Progress on) Saddles

Rapid and exciting progress is being made on the 451, which is now in the Diesel shop in Barn 2. You'll want to see the pictures displayed here on the Member's Photo Gallery, posted by Pete Pedersen.

And in breaking news, I just got word from Dick Lukin that he had made arrangements with a sawmill in Zion he's familiar with, and arranged for white oak of the appropriate size for new saddles for the 451 to be rough cut. Frank Sirinek and Dick then drove to the sawmill earlier today and bought the wood, which by the time you read this should be in the car shop, ready to mill. I can't promise you we'll have a post every day, but maybe Pete will! And note how Frank, Mike, and Dick are all going out of their way to speed progress on our new cars. Wow!

Anyhow, money is $till needed to keep the pot boiling. Charlie Strong is working full-time to get this job done and will do a superb job, as he did on the 749 (to be unveiled soon!) So please donate to the Electric Car Painting Fund if you can! Thanks!!!

Washington's Birthday

Today is the birthday celebration of George Washington. Washington was said to be "First in War, First in Peace and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen."

My wife purchased this old ad, from a 1930s Life Magazine from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. The C&O often billed itself as "George Washington's Railroad" as one of the predecessor companies, a canal company was chartered by our first President. Never to miss an opportunity, the ad also reminds the traveling public of the "fully air conditioned" train The George Washington with daily departures from both Cincinnati and Washington, D.C., with connections to Louisville and Newport News.

It Helps To Be Organistized

Greg Ceurvorst (who is actually an organist) was helping again today, so we got quite a bit accomplished on restoring the 319. First, I had him paint the new siding pieces which I had made with primer.

I worked on making usable locking parts for the doors on the 36. I also removed two more side windows from the 319, and took them to the shop for Greg to strip. I had to work my way into the 321, which is still outside under a huge tarp, and get two more spare windows to fill in the gaps.

The 319 had several visitors today, including Rich Block, Jack Biesterfeld, and Norm and Kathy Krentel. Norm and Kathy also toured the 36; he's planning to take a day off and drive to Cleveland to pick up some parts for the 36 that were left behind, so we needed to look over what exactly he should get.

As mentioned before, dash lights were installed in the 319 at Cleveland to backdate the car, but we needed to remove them. So some of the siding pieces on the end needed to be replaced. After a few hours, the primer was dry enough to handle, so I was able to install the new siding, as seen here. (There's a trim piece along the top, under the window sill, which I'll install next time.)

By the end of the day, Greg had finished sanding down two side windows. The orange latex paint is very difficult to remove. He then painted both sides of the two windows with white primer, as seen here. Thanks!

As usual, there were many other things going on. By the way, here's the interior of the new shop extension. It's now the easiest way to get from Depot St. to the car shop. What looks like tire tracks in front of the garage door is actually the supports for rails in our truck rebuilding shop.


A friend of IRM on the West Coast donated a CA&E headlight, and it arrived via UPS safe and sound. It's numbered 36, but that's purely a coincidence. Headlights weren't assigned to particular cars. Mike helped me get it out of the crate; it was packed with expandable foam, which certainly protected it well. Thanks!

Meanwhile, in the lounge, Julie and the Signalmen were reprising some of their greatest hits from the good old days, real show-stoppers like "GRS Position Light" from the Indiana Railroad. There's always lots of interesting things going on at IRM!

Update: A couple of things I forgot! Joel Ahrendt finished repainting the coat hooks and window latches for the 277, and gave them back to me. Thanks for the help!

And Frank and Mike are going to be finding the wood and making new saddles for the 451 and 460, so I helped them by measuring the ones on the 460. Lots of people are helping with getting the new CA&E cars into service.

Have You Seen This Car?

A reader asked for a picture of Shaker Heights car 12, and so here it is at no extra charge. This was originally Cleveland Railway #1212, a 1914 Brill center-entrance streetcar. It then operated on Shaker, and was preserved by the GCRTA, who still own it. Last November, it was stored under Terminal Tower in the famous subway. It's still there as far as I know. Not a good place for picture taking, but you can see it still has the pan. This was never part of the Trolleyville collection.

319 Report

Come earthquake, come pestilence or flood, we will not be dismayed. Well, maybe a little. I admit I was worried after the earthquake this morning at 4AM when I heard that it was centered near Virgil, which isn't far from Union. But nothing seems to have been damaged, so all is well.

I was eager to try out the locking device that Mike Alterio made for us. The prototype I gave him was made with thin plywood, so it was perhaps a little too loose. Mike's first block wouldn't fit onto the 319, but with some trimming it works fine on the 36, which has a thinner flap sticking out under the door. Here it is in place on that car. This replaces locking the car with a chain on one of the train doors, which is difficult to get at. And would really annoy our regular motormen!

The CA&E wood cars didn't have locking mechanisms of any sort, and I wanted to avoid having to modify our new cars if possible. (The 308 and 309 each have one door modified to take a North Shore coach key.) Here's a view of my locking device without the door in place; it's based on a standard latch from the hardware store. This might give you a better idea of how it works. (Patent pending) And by the way, thanks again, Mike!

I finished installing the brake rigging on the 319, and did some more sanding. Also looked at floor paint and miscellaneous things.

Frank did a great job putting primer on the drop sash, so I decided to put it back on the car to close it up. We do not yet have the correct red. I also took another side window to the car shop and started stripping it, but the orange latex paint is hard to remove.

In other news, the 409 is now in Barn 8 on 83, so 3/4 of our CA&E collection is there. That probably won't last long. The 319 should be going over to Barn 2 once the 749 comes out, so we'll have the luxury of a heated shop to work in!

Bob Kutella had a doctor's appointment today, but several of the other Wednesday crowd were out: Gerry, Charlie, Henry, Pete, John, and Mike Alterio in the signal shop. Henry is working on windows for the 409, as well as the 757.

Car Shop Bulletin Board

Some pretty interesting documents have recently been found and copies posted on the bulletin board in the car shop. I photographed them for the enjoyment of our readers.

First, correspondence from 1958 between the Electric Railway Historical Society and the CTA outlining a purchase agreement to buy several cars now in the IRM collection: the Matchbox, both of the "green cars" (2843 and 2846) and snow plow F305.












Note that ERHS mixed and matched trucks on the Matchbox, presumably to obtain the best set available, and also that they acquired GE 800 motors for the mail car, which they never owned. Maybe they were hoping to acquire it? And at right, a time sheet of sorts recording some of the people who helped load the cars at 77th & Vincennes. Among the names on the list are Nick Kallas, Bill McGregor, Bob Gibson, Bob Selle and Charlie King.

Fifteen years later, in 1973, ERHS was coming to an end as an organization. It had been evicted from Bud Gnas' farm in Downers Grove, where its barn was located, and a decision had to be made about what to do with the collection.



At left, the meeting notice which was sent to Nick Kallas and signed by Bill McGregor, who was president of ERHS at the time. Below, the minutes to the meeting that decided the fate of the ERHS collection.












And the conclusion: the letter written to IRM offering the entire collection of street railway equipment to us. Today the ERHS collection forms the majority of IRM's operating streetcar fleet.

Roofs and Windows

When I arrived yesterday, the first task I had been assigned was to complete priming the two windows (one side window and a side door drop sash) for the 319 with white primer. I did one side (photo) and then went to help out Joel Ahrendt and Greg Kepka, who were working on steel car 451. Since Saturday it had been moved into the heated portion of the Barn 2 diesel shop and the three of us got to work stripping the roof of the old canvas and roof boards. Unfortunately I haven't been able to retrieve the photos I took yet, but there was a photographer passing through who took this photo of me. After a while of this, I took off and returned to the car shop to put a final coat of white primer on the other side of those two windows. They're now ready for finish paint and/or installation.

Below left, the yellow thing is part of a new mechanism for locking up the 319 made for us by museum machining expert Mike Alterio in about 16 hours - thanks Mike! Below right, the three of us on the roof of the 451: Joel in the shadows on the left working on a ventilator, Greg in the middle removing canvas and yours truly on the right unscrewing roof boards.

Black and White and Red All Over

A friend wrote in with an interesting question:

Q. I have attached 3 photos from the early 1940's available from the net. Although B&W, all three seem to show the blue color scheme without the front door and around the windows appearing to be red. Was this an earlier variant of the blue-red scheme? Was the front grey? Two show the 308 so painted and in the other the 318 seems to be similarly painted. There are also pictures on the net showing the 319 so painted at Trolleyville, but I know that they didn't care about "correct" colors. Could you explain the colors in these photos?

A. It's due to the use of different types of black and white film available at that time. They had different responses to various colors, and red in particular tended to vary. In one type red tended to appear very dark, in another type very light. Here's an illustration: look at these two photos.









These show the same car in exactly the same paint scheme. (They might even have been taken on the same fantrip.) In one, the red ends appear as light as the grey, in the other they're darker than the blue, nearly black. So determining the colors from a black and white photograph is not easy.

On the CA&E, the various paint schemes had different patterns of the different colors, and that's how we generally decide which paint scheme we're looking at.

Hope this helps!

Antidecalcomania Made Easy

Chris Buck was working with me again today on the 319. He did all of the sanding on the upper parts of the car on the north side, working from the platform. This prepares the surface for repainting. He finished the entire side, which is very helpful. The car is supposed to be moved over to track 83, so we'll be able to move the platform over to the other aisle and do the other side of the car. One important aspect of this work is removing the lettering, all of which was done with decals.

The word "decal" is actually an abbreviation of decalcomania. Cliff Perry must have been a modeller. I've been looking back through my notes, and found where he told me how he chose the 319's paint: he found a formula in a model railroad magazine and mixed up some Floquil, then had it matched in gallons. And then he had the car lettered with decals, as seen here.

Fortunately it's not too hard to remove them, but there's still a layer of glue underneath which we had to work to remove. We don't want ghostly outlines of the previous lettering showing under the new paint. Chris did a good job of sanding it all down.

Meanwhile, I removed all of the siding pieces that had been cut to install the dash lights. I have made the replacement siding pieces, but they still need chamfers and some trimming. Installation will start next time. The #1 end now looks like this. I like to include the tools I use in these pictures; this one shows the Hicks Chair of Mathematics and Bill Nedden's hammer.

I also finished installing the first top rod and got the second one into position; there's still some more adjustment to be done, but the brake rigging is nearly complete.

Later in the day, Chris put another coat of white primer on the drop sash for the 319, so it can be put back on the car soon. Thanks!

There were many other things going on today, too many to mention. Lots of switching; the Zephyr was pulled out to remove the Grand Trunk RPO. You should just barely see the E-5 and Milwaukee FM switcher in the distance.

Charlie Strong was working on the roof of the 451, helped by Tim and others. There are two layers of canvas, both installed by the CA&E. Here you can see how the top layer is being peeled off. As often happens, we discover unexpected problems when doing things like this, but nothing that can't be fixed.

And then the top platform for the South Shore line car arrived on a flat bed; here Joe and Joel are unloading it with the big forklift. I had to leave before it was safely stored. And as I say, there were many other projects being pursued. If you're sorry you missed out on all this fun, there's always next week!

Prep School

Today involved doing a lot more surface prep so the 319 can be repainted. I did some more stripping with the heat gun, but decided that probably won't be necessary. I started sanding down the car with an orbital sander using 60 grit. Al Reinschmidt came out and did much of the work. I spoke to Charlie Strong about Car Dept. plans for the 319 and 451; he will be doing most of the exterior painting for the cars. More about this later.

Al also helped me move the top rods for the brake rigging into position. One of them we managed to install; the other one is still sitting on boards next to the car. By the end of the day, he had sanded down the entire side below the belt rail and done part of the far end. Thanks!!

I also spent some time looking at some parts of the control system. This is the Rube Goldberg overload relay; the 321 has one just like this, so I know how it's supposed to work. Motor current flows through the leads A. This energizes solenoid B; if there's excessive current, solenoid B pulls up lever C, rotating it counter-clockwise. Lever C then moves lever D clockwise. This releases a latch on lever E. Lever E is weighted down by the shaft F which has four sets of interlock contacts; only the top one is used. When lever E is released, the contacts should drop, shutting off all power to the contactors. The motorman can reset the system by using the reset switch in the electrical cabinet to energize coil G. This pulls on lever E to raise shaft F, latch D to E, and reset the whole ridiculous device. The motion is sluggish and needs to be freed up with WD-40 and oil, but I believe it should work.

The 460 has been moved into Barn 8, and here it is followed by the 36, 309, and 308.

Anybody want to go bowling?

Back to the Futura

I spent part of today helping Charlie Strong uncover and trace original lettering from the 451, which is in Barn 4 for some basic repair work and survey of condition. As delivered from St. Louis Car Company, cars 451-460 had modern Futura lettering, similar or identical to what the Union Pacific has used for the past 70+ years. When they went through the Wheaton paint shop at the age of about five years they were repainted with standard CA&E Railroad Roman lettering. While plans of exactly how to paint 451 and 460 have not been finalized, work is being done to record both types of lettering before all of the paint is stripped off. Below left, Charlie (right) shows Adam Robillard, who stopped by between Track Department jobs, the 451's original Futura number; below right the 1950's Roman number has been highlighted in marker prior to tracing.











During breaks from this job to go into the shop and warm up, I also helped with some work on the 319. Buzz Morisette was working on the car too - at left he is seen installing new glass in one of the side windows (a new pane of glass was also installed in one of the drop sash windows - Frank Sirinek did the glass cutting for both).


The hardest-working man in the department on Sunday was Jon Fenlaciki, who spent the entire day wire-wheeling and then cleaning and priming the step wells for the 409. Below left he is seen during a break in the action; below right the step wells are shown after completion of painting, with which Jon was helped by Greg Kepka.