Trolley Pageant 2015

Our staff photographer was otherwise occupied, so we're asking for photos from this year's Trolley Pageant.  I was too busy to do very much, so this will have to suffice until your submissions arrive.

This year we followed the same basic format as last year: each train made one (or two) mainline trips in passenger service, so that people would have an opportunity to ride a variety of equipment.

 

The first train out was the "Brookins Express", cars 36 and 319.  Both cars were packed with passengers, and although the 36 is temporarily unable to motor, as described before, everything went well. 

This was followed later by the old reliables, 308 and 309, with Frank as the motorman.  I came along as a trainman, and it was nice to meet the 409-431 on our trip, and imagine we were at Eola.   There were many other trains running I didn't get a chance to snap.

We seemed to have a very good crowd of visitors, and I spoke to members of at least five other trolley museums: Branford, Arden, McKinney, Rio Vista, and Orange Empire.  

Here's a unique train: Differential dump motor D-13 pulling three cabooses.  Of course, this run sold out quickly.

Our first car, Indiana Railroad 65, operated for a couple of trips.

As time goes on, passenger service gets less and less profitable.  So we're trying to get into the freight business.  If we can't get more traffic than this, though, the future looks bleak.

Here we have in one place nearly an entire history of Chicago rapid transit equipment.  The few missing links are elsewhere in our barns.

Speaking of missing links, Andy brought out the South Shore line car for a trip.  It's not designed for passenger service, of course, but a dozen or so people can sit and others can stand for a ride on a unique piece of history.

 Before they boarded, I had a chance to get some pictures of the interior in daylight. 

 These markings in the cab (R) always kill me.  Because the South Shore has never had any convenient way to turn equipment around, "east" and "west" were permanent features of the car.

 There was lots of streetcar service, too.

Yeow!  The steam train was running all day, and I didn't even bother to take a picture of it!  How obtuse can I be?  The other thing I should take a picture of is the mainline right-of-way.  It's beautiful.  Yesterday I was talking to a man who's in charge of maintaining a ten-mile industrial railroad in Kentucky, and we talked about track and so on.  He said:  "This is amazing!  I wish our railroad looked anything like this!"

 Some people just aren't caught up in the pageantry.  It was a perfect day for applying varnish, so here is Tim working on the ceiling of the 24.  In the near future, it too will be part of the pageant.

And as the markers disappear in the distance, we say farewell until next year....





Update: David Sadowski has posted some great pictures of the pageant.

Ups and Downs

 First the bad news: we were planning to run the 36 and 319 for CA&E Day, but as the train was pulling out of the barn, I noticed the 36 had another grid failure and was leaving a trail of arcs and sparks.  Not good!  We pulled it back in so I could look at it.  The rest of the crew, Bob Opal and Sam Polonetzky, then took the two steel cars for revenue service.  The grid fault could not easily be patched, but at least it's not one of the boxes we've already rebuilt.  For the Pageant tomorrow, we're only scheduled to make one trip, and I plan to run the 36 as a control trailer with the 319.  We've done things like this before.   Here's the Brookins Express outside during a switch move to rearrange some of the cars in Barn 8.  After giving up on patching the grid box, I helped Joel and Ray with switching for a while.

And after that was done, I rejoined the crew on the CA&E train.

I think we had a pretty good crowd of visitors today.  In particular, we had visitors from several other trolley museums: McKinney Avenue, Branford, and Rio Vista.  And I met some blog readers and made new friends.

 

The 36 was not the only car to develop a minor problem today: the 714 had a stuck magnet valve, so the 251 was brought out for a rare appearance.  It's always good to see it in operation.

There may be some minor changes to the printed schedule for tomorrow, but the weather should be perfect and the Trolley Pageant should be a good time for everybody.   See you there!

Doodlebug For Sale

 In the "Not Really a Diner" department:

Near Searsport, Me. we came across this doodlebug carbody, presumably B&M, which was most recently the ice cream shop part of a restaurant.  The whole establishment was for sale.  It's uncommon to find a doodlebug reused like this, I think.

Visit to Seashore

 Kennebunkport, Maine is a tourist destination for several reasons, but the one we'll focus on today is the Seashore Trolley Museum, the nation's oldest and largest.  It was founded in 1938 by a group of railfans who decided to preserve a local open car, Biddeford and Saco #31.  Since then more than 200 electric cars have been acquired.  This car had badly deteriorated before a complete restoration was done about 1975.

The museum has a nice visitor's building, which serves as the entrance, ticket booth, gift shop, and has some displays.  And of course they sell Moxie.

This is essentially how we want the Schroeder Store to function until our own visitor's center is built.

Seashore's collection policy has a national focus, and among other things there is a substantial Chicago Collection.  I met Eric Gilman, a regular worker there, who showed us one of the current major projects in the shop: restoration of North Shore car 755, a Standard Steel coach of the same series as our 757. 

It was sitting outside under a tree while being worked on.  The car is complete and operable, but needs a complete cosmetic restoration.

Much of this will look familiar to those who worked on the 749 for so many years.

Eric plans to be at the ARM convention this fall, and wants to look at the 251 in greater detail.   I told him what I could remember of the process used to paint the Silverliner scheme back in 1978 or so.

Seashore, of course, does excellent restoration work.  Here's CA&E car 434, which was finished back about 2000.  

Incidentally, many of these cars are open for visitors to walk through without supervision.  They don't seem to have the same problems with theft and vandalism that we have had.

And here is CSL 225, a Pullman like our 144 and 460.   It operates occasionally. 

Cleveland center-entrance car 1227 is the same type as our 1218 recently acquired from the Brookins collection.


















The barns are named after the shops of various electric lines around the country.

This is the City of Manchester, a party car built in 1898 by Briggs Carriage and restored by Seashore from a decrepit wreck.  It operates occasionally.

 

Now they are engaged in producing a replica of this car for a private owner, who wants it to get from his house to his boat dock 500' away.  The body is being made by a boat builder in upper Maine, and Seashore is providing the floor, the truck, and the mechanical parts.  Eric reports that since this picture was taken two weeks ago, the truck has been almost finished and they test-ran it using a welder.  Nice work if you can get it!

On the day we were there, a good-sized crowd from Washington were visiting Seashore as part of a general tour of Maine.  It helps to be in a nice tourist area.

Four cars were running (on a Thursday) at various times during the day, including this Connecticut open.

Another was this classic Cincannati curve-side car.  I think maybe this is the only one that has been restored to operating condition.

There's a lot more to the collection.  The less photogenic parts are off-limits to the public, and we've covered those before.

And there are buildings.  This was a dispatcher's tower on the Boston Elevated.  In 1976 it was lifted off the structure by a large crane, swung over and onto a barge waiting below in the Charles River, and transported up to Maine.  I was in Boston at the time and able to watch the process.  Now how they got it from the harbor to the museum property five miles away I couldn't say.

I have more pictures, but that's enough for now. 

Education

Helping to fulfill the Museum's educational mission, here we see Ray Bellock telling a visiting group of children today how a steam locomotive works. That's just one example of the many ways volunteers can contribute their time and talents.

I was out briefly today, doing some cleaning and testing to make sure the wood cars are ready for service on Friday, CA&E Day, and Saturday, the Trolley Pageant.  Not much to show there, so let's see what else was happening nearby.

Jon Fenlaciki just finished waxing the linoleum floor in the 65.  With the new seats, it really looks good.  It will be running in revenue service for the pageant.

John Faulhaber and Gerry Dettloff were working on the D-13, as usual.  It will be pulling a caboose train for the pageant.

I've been away on vacation for a couple of weeks, which is why I haven't had anything to post.  But that will change soon; I have lots of pictures of various museums and displays to present.  I'm not even going to tell you where we were, yet.  But here's a hint: drink Moxie!

Pageant Schedule

Here's the planned schedule for Trolley Pageant operations on July 4th.  As always, this is subject to change due to weather, mechanical condition, and factors beyond human control.

And by the way, for July 3rd (CA&E Day) we still need a conductor and/or trainman for the wood cars.  I'll take an open position, but please sign up if you can.  Thanks.

Pageant Prep

Frank writes...

I was able to make it out to the museum Sunday but didn't get there until 3pm.  Nevertheless I brought a Shop-Vac over to the 205 and vacuumed out the interior of the car.  I had previously swept out the car but now the floor is as clean as it's going to be.  It doesn't look much different than it did before so I didn't get a photo.  I'd still like to wipe down the seats but other than that, interior work (such as it is) on the 205 is done.

After this Gregg Wolfersheim stopped by and gave me copies of some photos of the Electric Railway Historical Society cars being moved out to IRM in 1973, so keep an eye on the blog for those!  I'll try and get them scanned in and posted soon.  And then I wandered over to Barn 4, where Joel Ahrendt and Richard Schauer were firing up the Army 45-tonner to do some switching.  I went along to help out, though "help out" may be a bit generous.  Most of the time I was getting an education in the intricacies of freight car hand brakes, wreck knuckles (not as bad as it sounds), the hangar doors on Barn 10, and other things that I usually don't deal with when I'm helping in the Electric Car Department.

The goal was to get things staged for the Trolley Pageant next Saturday, which meant digging cabooses and freight cars out from the south yards and also bringing the caboose train in from Schmidt Siding where it had been spotted for the weekend.  Above, I got a shot of the demonstration freight train during a break from the action as Richard goes to check the hand brake on the GN hopper.  While we were traversing South Junction, he opined that the area should be given a more poetic and descriptive name, maybe Mosquito Haven or something.

And that was about it for my day.  The Trolley Pageant next weekend is shaping up to be a great one; as with last year, visitors will be able to ride a different train about every 15 minutes!  The four CA&E woods will all be out, 36 and 319 scheduled for the 10:30am trip and 308-309 for the noon trip.  Don't miss it!

And on another subject, the 144 recently had an air compressor failure (National pump pictured above) and the repair shop has offered a good volume discount if we get three armatures rebuilt at the same time.  So please consider a donation to the cause to help get this work done!  (Just put "Electric Car Department" on the memo line.  This won't just get the 144 running again; the same type of air compressor is used on the 1374 and the 2843 (if and when it is restored), so we'd like to get this work done now while the prices are good.  Any help is appreciated!