Time to Slow Down?

I try to keep my eyes open for another 1-50 series "L" car or two so that I can move forward with my Skokie Swift set. I'm also constantly on the lookout for more CA&E rolling stock. And yet I don't find either of these, but I manage within three weeks to acquire two O scale North Shore Line cars. The new car arrived today.

It's a 250-256 series combine which was produced by Bill Clouser. The quality (which is a given) is exceptional. The body is missing equipment (it was made that way) but the model came with—as far as I can tell—a complete set of exterior detail pieces. The only thing it's missing are poles, motors, trucks, and an interior. I'll need to determine the general era of the car, given the ventilators on the roof.

A side-by-side comparison of the ends of the two cars.

The roof doesn't seem to come off. Neither does the car floor. I haven't tried too hard out of fear of damaging the model.

Something else also arrived today.

Yup. More North Shore stuff. This time a pair of Walthers North Shore car ends. Still in the packaging. The printed price is $1.95. That's not quite what I paid! Currently I have no plans for these, but, you never know. Definitely could be useful down the road.

The Visit to the Museum

No, this isn't a thesis on the short story by Vladimir Nabokov. (Which is a great story by the way. You should read it.) On Sunday I went out to the Illinois Railway Museum. The purpose was to take measurements on the underbody equipment of the 2400-series "L" cars, the bodies of the 2200-series "L" cars, the body of the CA&E 400-series (Pullman) car, and the trolley beam on a North Shore Line car. I wanted these measurements as I plan on using the 2400-series underbody as a stand-in for the 3200-series equipment so that I can correct the horrible job MTH did on the 3200-series cars. The measurements of the 2200-series and CA&E cars were to facilitate the creation of O scale models of each. The North Shore trolley beam was to attempt a scale trolley beam with dangling gravity shoe for my recently acquired North Shore coach.

In an overzealous attempt to maximize my time, I left my house around 7:00 a.m. and arrived at the museum a few minutes before 9:00. It should come as no surprise that I was the first person there. The day can be summed up by saying the best part of the whole trip was a sight in the diner, captured in the picture below.

Things did not start off well when I noticed, shortly after my arrival, that the pair of 2200-series cars had been moved away from the 50th Avenue "L" station and spirited away to some unknown location. I later found the cars, but as I am not eleven feet tall, the lack of that high-level platform really knocked down my ability to take measurements of the heights of things. Many of these measurements are omitted in this set of drawings from the CERA bulletin.

The CA&E Pullman was not in the barn (it was running on the main line) so those measurements were out. I did go to town on the 2400-series cars and on a North Shore trolley beam. By 4:00 my patience with the task was utterly spent and I had developed a severe headache, so I left.

Upon returning home I immediately set about trying to plug my new found knowledge into my computer, only to discover quite rapidly, that I had, in fact, missed a few crucial measurements. I hastily checked and rechecked my intricate, scrawled notes, came to the same conclusion, and proceeded to spout a stream of profanity and pronounce a lengthy malediction.

This did not improve my headache.

Frustrated though I may have been, the trip was not a total loss. I did acquire some useful measurements on the 2400-series underbody equipment and I did get some measurements on the 2200-series cars. These should serve as a good starting point. I also checked out the snowplows on the 2400-series car and their design is simplified from those on the 2200s. A trip on the Ravenswood yesterday confirmed that the 3200s use the same design. I have since updated my 3D model accordingly.

Some parts have been exaggerated to accommodate the minimum size specifications for printing in Frosted Ultra Detail.

Third Rail Chairs

Given my recent decision to construct a two-rail layout with dummy third rail, this means I'm going to need third rail chairs. Unfortunately, the only such chairs that are commercially available that I know of are the ones from Q car, and these are for the Interborough Rapid Transit or the Independent Subway and Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit lines in New York. Some of the third rail chairs used in Chicago are slightly similar to the IND/BMT chairs, but having seen them in use as part of a display for a pair of "L" cars, they just don't look right.

Chicago was home to two third rail lines: the "L" and the Chicago Aurora and Elgin. I'm going to begin with a set of CA&E chairs, primarily because these were the most readily available.

This style of third rail chair was used throughout most of the CA&E's history.

Back to Google Sketchup! I started by creating a box with the length of the long portion of the base, the width of the wide square portion of the cap, and the height of the flat portion of the cap. I then deleted the sides of the box so that I was left with a basic frame. Doing it this way removes the need to try to line everything up later.

Creating the cap was a pretty straightforward task of drawing a series of squares of the appropriate lengths and pulling the created faces. The hardest part was creating the curved ends for the protruding pieces that hold the rail in place.

The wooden block beneath the cap is, for the most part a straight forward block. About halfway down, the edges are cut off at an angle in a decorative way.

Recreating this in Sketchup has proved problematic and I haven't yet found a solution. Stay tuned!

Now arriving on Track 4...

The North Shore car arrived last week. Here it is!

Despite its flaws—including a bent pilot—I'm quite satisfied. After reviewing the CERA bulletins, I've determined that this is a model of the 737-776 series of cars as modernized, but not as a Silverliner. These cars were actually from two separate series built by two different manufacturers at different times, but having almost identical specifications. 737-751 were built by Pullman in 1928. The rest were produced by Standard in 1930. I haven't picked a series yet (although I'm leaning toward the Standard-built cars) but I do know that I will not be giving it the number of a preserved car. I like the concept of recreating and preserving (in a small way—no pun intended) something that was lost.

The car is missing a few things. This includes (but is not limited to) trucks, couplers, poles, and trolley hooks. Also, on one corner a small bracket seems to have been knocked off. I believe this is supposed to hold either flags or lanterns. The more learned will have to comment.

The hole is where the missing bracket is supposed to be.

A little known fact about these cars is that while being modernized, the trucks and poles were removed. The cars were then painted in a rather striking all-brass livery. The area around the shops was also home to an American species of roc that was long believed to have been mythical. (The "legend" of these giant birds were the inspiration for Baby Huey.) The birds have since gone extinct, but I have managed to locate a rare color photograph depicting this situation. The Smithsonian will no doubt be interested in my finding.