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.