Charter This Car

 Today the Central Electric Railfans' Association paid a visit to IRM, with chartered trips on several unique pieces of equipment, and a good time was had by all.  This "CERA" has now been in existence three times longer than the real CERA, so that's quite an accomplishment. 

 

Anyway, one car they requested was CA&E 36, so that was brought out for a trip.  We parked the car over at 50th Avenue until the fans were ready to load, and after a couple of photo ops went out on the main line for a trip, including a photo runby out at Seeman.  I was too busy to take any pictures after leaving 50th, but I'm hoping we'll get photo submissions and/or links to videos on YouTube from the participants.

  Things went well.  David Streeter was the conductor, and Frank came along as a technical consultant, since some minor grid problems had appeared.  But those can be fixed over the winter.

After the revenue service was over, we had some time to put the car on the pit lead so Frank could continue needle-chipping the side sill, and I helped with wire-wheeling.  Bit by bit, it's getting done.

Anyway, thanks to David Sadowski and all the other members for making this trip possible.  It was a blast!  And IRM's charter department has operators standing by to take your call.

Frank adds...

After the above photo was taken I got in another hour or two of needle chipping and made it down to the #1 end bolster.  Then I ran the 36 back to the barn.  The car might come out of the barn for switch moves in the next few weeks but I'd expect that Sunday closed out another successful year of operations for the wood fleet.

One other interesting sight was the above six-car train of high-performance CTA cars.  The near two cars are the most recently acquired electric cars at the museum, the 2400-series Boeing-built cars.  But take a good look at the furthest two cars, our 2000-series 1964-vintage Pullman 'L' cars.  Right after this photo was taken the 2000s were put into Barn 2 for the winter, from whence - if all goes according to plan - they will emerge in early 2015 in a shiny new coat of 1960s CTA Mint Green and Alpine White.  It will be quite a sight!