Simms Collection -- More CA&E!

I just discovered another treasure trove of  CA&E photos from the Simms collection that I hadn't even looked through yet.  As usual, captions below the pictures are copied from the prints.

We'll start with the jewel of the fleet:

note the three man crew
CA+E at Glen Ellyn
309
I can't find the negative
of  this one I think this was
1938 or 1939
The other car was probably 306
The window glass was already boarded up

And next, a complete roster of box motors!

#5:

June 22, 1943

#7:

Mar 26, 1944

#9:

#9 and #3:

Jan 1945

#11:

Jan 5, 39

Mar 26, 1944

There was never a #13.  #15:

#45:

And various in-service pictures:

451 still in the Futura, hitting the IC diamond at Elmhurst.  Coming soon to a museum near you:

Car 16 on the Batavia shuttle, passing under the route 25 bridge:

A view you don't often see: looking down from the tower.  In this view, the Elgin train could be either eastbound or westbound.

Interior photos are always interesting.  This appears to be car 10, but the baggage racks are not what I would expect.

Next, a couple of freight crew pictures:

March 9, 1946
L to R                                  
Goose Martin, Ralph Gargo(?)
Mr. Keck & Frank Krejcek

Motorman Lyle Keck
Frank                      
Frank Krejcek        

(So that's 2 1/2 names for four men.  What can I say?)

Finally, some fan trips!

This is the Illini Railroad Club at Batavia, of course, and I believe the 316 is behind the 317:

Probably the CERA.  Not sure of the location.

Probably the CERA trip of Aug. 6, 1939, last trip on Aurora street trackage.  The 419 is the regular service car.  I guess we have a railfan from Yale!

Simms Collection -- Cleveland Area

 I must admit, some of these Simms Collection sets are like a box of chocolates.  A couple of the photos here may not even be from the Cleveland area.  Corrections welcome!

As usual, captions are taken from the prints unless otherwise noted.

Cleveland Southwestern Ry. #200

Cleveland Southwestern #203

Cleveland Southerwestern Ry. #205

Dayton & Troy #210

Dayton & Western 1210
Crossing over PRR near Richmond Ind.
1-15-33
J. F. Cook
Anderson, Ind.

Lake Shore Electric Ry. #156

Toledo & Indiana R. R. #15

 Art Peterson says: Ohio Public Service line car 50 (Niles, 1905). This car later was part of the Toledo & Eastern roster.  

These next two appear to have been lettered for Indiana Service Corp.:

RH: #352

And finally, this must be Cincinnati:

Weekday Ops

Now that it's officially Summer, weekday operations are important.  But we'll get to that in a minute.

Today was another busy day at IRM.  Volunteers were working in various departments, and contractors were working on their projects.  In the "I Can See Right Through You" department, we have this view of work on Barn 7:

And of course we need to keep trains running for weekday visitors to ride.  Today's service was provided by the old reliable 431, with Ron Seavers and myself as the crew.

I would like to think we meet the standard for what train crews should look like.  Feel free to disagree, but don't walk down any dark alleys....

Seriously, though, we do need weekday crews.  If you don't understand the new $50 bonus rule, I can try to explain it.

Monday Brief

As it happens, someone was asking just yesterday about truss rods on early steel cars, and we have some news to share about this very subject.  The Michigan Electric 28 is in the process of a complete rebuilding and restoration, and among many other things we need to replace the truss rods, which were removed when the carbody was made into a house.  I was talking to Norm about it on Monday.  The 28's truss rods were bigger than anything we have on hand, so they will have to be made, but most of the auxiliary parts are available.  He already has the correct turnbuckles, for instance.

Fritz is working on some of the underbody parts, and in particular these I beams are going to be the needle beams.  It's a big project!

I started disassembling the third rail beams from the 319.  Here they are as delivered, and I certainly appreciate the help.  I managed to get most of the parts removed by the time I left.

And then I put primer on the remaining bare wood on the new beams, and started painting them black.

Of course, a lot of other things were going on, and this is only a sample.  Here Jim Ward is hard at work getting the east controller on the 306 wired up.

And Tim was varnishing more parts for the 268.

And as usual, there were lots of other things going on, but you have to be there, or be square.

Simms Collection -- Interstate Public Service

 The Interstate collection is rather limited, and only a couple of the prints have any information.

#122

#150

"150 + 605
Locomotives sold to Winona RR
and still operating there"

#152

#155

#155

#156 in Columbus, Ind.

#157

#158

#158?

#300

Finished!

Frank writes...

There were a few different things happening on Sunday, but the most consequential for me - if not necessarily for anyone else - was that I completed painting work on Shaker Heights 63.

This involved climbing up on the roof and painting the whole center - anything that couldn't be reached from the top of a ladder - as well as the trolley base shroud grey. Now, there's an asterisk to this: although painting work is complete, I'd still like to apply a handful of decals or stickers at some point. These include the "Westbound Entrance" and "Eastbound Entrance" legends next to the doors and, more noticeably, the RTA emblems. I'd really love to get a copy of a vector file for that RTA emblem, which by the way, is still used by GCRTA. I've tried reaching out to them a couple of times with no success yet. Anyone know someone with that agency who could hook us up?

Joel ordered nice new blue flags for the barns, so the guys put this one up for me. Pretty slick! If you don't know what a blue flag means, then you'd better get back to studying that rulebook. Anyway, thanks to Dan and Greg for their help with the 63. After dinner, I picked up all the trash around the car - wadded-up masking tape, newspaper, used foam trim rollers, etc. - and threw it out. C'est fait.

Let's move to a more important project: the 36. It turns out we will want to chain the truck frame to the rail so we can freely jack up the spring plank, but where the truck was sitting on track 43, that's not possible because the pavement comes right up to the railhead. We're not complaining - we're glad it does - but we needed to move the truck over to track 42. Joel, shown here running the forklift, and Richard moved a pair of 4000 trailer trucks out of the way and then shifted the 36 truck over. The entire operation probably took 15 minutes. It's almost like they've done this before!

The other priority for the day was removing the two third rail beams from the R side of the 319 for replacement of the wooden beams. A huge thank you goes out to Mikey and two of his friends, who were all indispensable in getting the beams removed from the car and moved back to the shop. 

After dinner, Steven removed the thermostat from the 18. Above is a photo showing how the wires are connected; the wire with the tag goes on the "57/60" terminal and the other wire goes on the "R-881-C" (or something like that) side.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how this thing works and virtually no idea how to troubleshoot it, so I'm hoping better minds can lend a hand. Our goal here is to get the heat working correctly in case the opportunity arises to use the 18 during the colder months. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.

In other news, Nick and Greg were disconnecting the 600V connection to Barn 7 so that portion of the exterior sheathing could be replaced; Jimmy and Steven were in train service; Brian was working on air brake stuff; and Jerry - helped at times by Richard, JD, Steven, and others - was working on the CTA 6600s.