shout out from IRM list forwarded

To anyone who is interested. Bob Harris is scrapping South Shore catenary bridges from the ideal section near Miller IN. IRM has no money to buy them. Bob will sell them for an estimated scrap value of $500 each. Now is your chance to help IRM to preserve a portion of history. Contact me so I can tell Bob to save them. We need to know in about one week. Andrew Sunderland

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IRMlist/

http://www.irm.org/

-edit-

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/I ... sage/16077

visit this thread,

any more questions post in this thread.

I'd STRONGLY suggest you take the unrelated email address out of this post...I know who it belongs to, and he would NOT be amused......

Jeff

that IS the contact email, I am helping the thrust to save the catenaries and that is who to contact. Di-rect.

I would strongly suggest checking your facts...the contact is Andrew Sunderland...and that is NOT his email address....

It appears that the topic on IRMlist has a glitch, the email address you posted is from the "top" unrelated message (topic: CTA pcc car accident from 1950), the SECOND message has the proper email

Again, CHECK YOUR FACTS, without using the Evylyn Wood Speed Reading Method!

Jeff

edited to link directly to the post.

any other questions feel free to ask here, I will lead you on, I emailed Bob Harris directly, he has all the towers, but selling off half, one way or another.

I hope wchogger isnt too ticked and helps pass info on.

for those not in the know and more info, these catenary towers were used on the South Shore till they recently changed the catenary suspensions, these towers stood their time since built, they are the same design used on the North Shore Skokie valley
route, they were called by/ fans/South Shore the "Ideal Section", most other catenary towers were wooden pole sets, in time you were changing these either from age/damage, etc, but the "ideal section" kept going, holding the wire.

http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/52828996@N04/4988277785/



none of the North Shore versions exist that I know of, help save these, get them to IRM who run North Shore cars regularly, these towers fit in perfectly.

How may does IRM want, and are they capable of picking them up and moving them?

As an aside to all the railfan comments about the Ideal Section being about the SSL Catenary, this is not true. I am familiar with a set of drawings prepared by Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen for the "Ideal Section." These incorporated a flowing landscape of natural elements that followed the roadway through the same region of the South Shore structures we are discussing. His patterns invoked nature and provided interest to the passing driver at designed speeds.

Therefore, I believe the Ideal Section has more to do with a government-sponsored program for transportation design in general. The catenary structures are probably more incidental, as the Bates poles and bridge structures were used elsewhere on the Insull system outside of this "Ideal Section."

This example shows the North Shore design connected to power lines.

Many of the end brackets that connected every second bridge to a high tension tower still exist, still in place on the towers, just north of the current end of track of the CTA Skokie Swift line (Yellow Line to the younger crowd)

The brackets are quite visible, being the only unpainted (black/rusty) parts of the high tension towers. Look on the west side of the towers, if you are in the neighborhood.

Jeff

the Purchase price is $1000 each not 500 as previous, but looks Bob has held off scrapping them off for potential purchasers.

Has Bob given up all hopes of doing anything with all the South Shore items he has collected? The last time I was at his Michigan City site there was a lot there! I know that at one time he also had several cars stored at different museums.

Mark A. Frazier

Mark -

Bob has cars 4 and 31 stored at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson. He was down there last Saturday with his crew working to repair some minor vandalism damage to the cars. I don't know the status of the equipment at Michigan City and elsewhere.

Les

Les,

15 is at Elkhart and I know that there were some cars at Noblesville also. I that Bob had some great ideas but local northern Indiana politics kept getting the way of a place for him to do it at.

Mark A. Frazier

Other than the two cars at Hoosier Valley, and possibly the one in Elkhart if indeed he has acquired that car, I think that his collection consists of the two coaches stored in East Chicago, the locomotive and parlor car in Michigan City and the wooden combine in southern Illinois.

My email I got from him he is looking at other locales to do a project like he was trying in South Bend, its obvious he's trying to find a good home for his equipment and stuff, he was going to try to establish a museum in the area east of Bendix in the old small industry complex there. If that came to fruition I would make myself available to help that out. Combine that having the cars there and locomotive it made sense to try to connect Notre Dame bringing passengers in via the old South Shore cars and rehook up the railroad coal service. Everything is still practically in place to still do it yet but the rail line has been "vandalized" here and there and work would need to be done to bring it to condition, but not impossible.
As the rail line stands now any abandonment is blocked by the court citing Notre Dame could still decide to use it. Should something happen to the coal trucking you better have a backup plan. Thats why the line is still important.