A very interesting article on Duck Lake, Michigan. Seemingly this lakefront cottage area was somewhat of an interurban graveyard. As mentioned in the article, Norm Krentel of IRM had heard rumors of carbodies from the old Michigan Electric.He and I ventured out to the area in the 1970's and after several false leads found the correct Duck Lake. We were amazed to see ME 28 clearly identifiable and sitting up on a concrete block foundation. Even more incredible was a sign posted saying to the effect "FREE Interurban Car"!!!!Norm went into action and the carbody was obtained and moved to our site in Union, IL. He has worked since then on the restoration which is a HUGE job. The car received a quick cosmetic paint job to restore it to its orange and dark green paint, and was placed on shop trucks to allow its movement on site.At some point sister car 26 was discovered, also I believe in the Albion area. That car was beyond moving or saving and the owners were about to dismantle and scrap the remains. We salvaged several key components which have been removed to Union and have proved valuable in recreating details and answering questions.Restoration efforts continue and notable progress is being made on the rear platform area including fabricating new steel, hanging of the coupler, hot riveting the repairs into place, new step wells, body bolsters, and brake system work. Hopefully some day the car can be made to operate once again.Extensive research has yielded car drawings from the St. Louis Car Co. records on file with Washington University near St. Louis. Those wishing to help see that this effort continues and is successful can send donations to Illinois Railway Museum, Box 427, Union IL 60180. Donations are tax deductible and should be marked "ME 28 Fund".Bob Kutella

Ah… ancient history. I know that Bob was present with Norman when they found the 28, but I was involved in the preparations for the move, and with Bob’s indulgence, I’ll fill in some details. Perhaps the story will give encouragement to someone else contemplating such a project. The entire move was accomplished with no more than four men on site at any one time.First off, I was under the impression that Norm was aware of the location of sister car 26 for a long while, since it was visible from Hwy 12 about two blocks from the former Michigan Electric shops in Albion, but felt it was unsuitable for preservation because the entire front of the car had been destroyed in a collision before the line quit, and at any rate the owners were not interested in parting with it. I understand that in recent years the car has been scrapped, but Norm and a crew from IRM were able to remove materials for use in the restoration of car 28.After Norman and Bob found the intact body of car 28 at Duck Lake, that was deemed the Michigan Electric car to save, as it was in good shape, high off the ground, and had protected by a full length gable roof, kind of like a 61' long dog house. The Michigan Electric used roof mounted headlights, too, and yes, the one on the 28 was lurking just inside the gable end.I was recruited to help with the move, mainly because I had a modicum of building trades skills and a beater station wagon that could haul a lot of supplies. Norman and I took a trip to size up the move. The first thing that was evident was the roof was going to have to come off to keep the load from exceeding 14’ in height. Looking in through the opened gable end, over that headlight basking in all its Golden Glow glory, showed that the original car roof had been chopped away to allow the new rafters to seat on the top plate of the sides, so we were going to have some roof patching to do after the dog house roof was removed. We also determined that the car was sitting on three concrete walls, one at each bolster and one at the mid point. These were poured concrete, not concrete block. Oh well, air hammers and compressors are easy enough to rent.We also made an inspection tour of the rest of the property, on the slim hope that some of the interior toilet partition pieces had survived somewhere. No luck with those, but as Norm was poking around along a rock wall at the edge of the property, he pulled up a pipe. “Probably the trolley pole”, I quipped. It was. While not in good enough shape to use, the remains of the harp confirmed that this big car had used a trolley wheel during street running rather than a slider shoe. Between towns, the line was all third rail. Later, Norman found a couple of the original seats stashed away in a shed.We decided to resolve the roof first, so as not have to deal with lifting the additional weight. Three of us, Norm, Tom Jervan, and myself, made the trip up to Duck Lake that Autumn in my grossly overloaded '64 Chevy; we had not only our tools and ladders, but also about half a dozen rolls of 90 pound roofing felt and many bundles of wood lath. We cut the roof in appx. six foot sections with a Skilsaw equipped with a carbide blade, cutting right through the asphalt shingles, Didn’t do the blades a bit of good, but it saved a lot of time not having to strip the shingles. As each cut was made, the roof was broken apart at the ridge and each section flipped over the car side, where they fell cleanly away. Norm had obtained a county burning permit, and just as we were deciding where to build the fire, the neighbor from across the road came over and asked us if we could build it over a stump he wanted to remove. Done.Luckily, all the original carlines were intact. The arched roof had been Agasoate, a composition material formed to shape, and the lower curved portions were gone. We temporarily sheathed the curve with the 3/8” lath, then roofed the hips with a single width of the 90 pound felt, sealing it to the original roof deck with roofing cement. When we were finished, the result looked like a ghost of an interurban car, 61’ long and painted entirely white.Winter set in, but Norm wanted to get the car moved before the spring thaw, when the local roads would have posted load limits for weeks in deference to the frost coming out of the ground, so we planned a winter excursion to deal with the foundation. We brought car jacks, and scouted around Albion until we found a fabricating yard that would sell us some ties to use as cribbing. We started by jacking the front of the car (the end away from the road) so the anti-climber was clear of the steps and blocked it on the front most foundation wall, which would remain past the end of the trailer we would be using. We then jacked the other end clear of the walls, and built a temporary tie crib just rearward of the rear bolster. Then we drove up to Lansing for the night, intending to pick up the compressor in the morning and make a quick run down to blast the walls out of the way.The following morning it was sleeting, and the forty mile trip was made on glare ice, towing the compressor. Once on site, at least it wasn’t raining on us when we were laying under the car gunning the walls out. The concrete was hand mixed, forty years old, and as hard as granite. I learned that day that you can run a Chevy six at idle all day for heat on less than an eight tank of gas.Spring came, but the oversize load permits didn’t, and the roads were posted before we were ready to move. Norm, TJ, and I were discussing how much nicer it would be if the car were to arrive at the museum in its proper orange over green with a terra cotta roof, so we made another trip to Duck Lake to paint it. Cheap porch and deck enamel worked great on the smooth 90 pound pilot roofing, and with a days work, the car looked like it was ready for its builder’s photo. At least it looked that way at dusk when we finished.At last we were ready for the move. IRM GM Nick Kallas joined Norm, TJ, and myself, and this time we took a rental truck loaded with jacks, a couple of I beams , and cribbing. Not, however, before I donated my windshield to the I beams, getting them to the truck. Who says you can’t carry 12’ long I beams in a station wagon?The cribbing placed the previous winter had settled when the frost came out of the ground, but with but with fifty ton capacity jacks and four guys to run them, the car came up fast, and soon was sitting on I beams cribbed far enough apart to clear the truck. The truck, a low level deck with eighteen tires at the rear that telescoped out to over fifty feet beyond the goose neck, showed right on schedule. We backed him in, stretched him out, then backed him in centered under the load. An hour or so of lowering the car body and tying it down, and we were ready to pull off the lot. The truck got halfway off, and got stuck, right on schedule. The rest of the day was spent working with not one but two wreckers to pull him free of the lot. The wreckers were blocking the only road into and out of the cottage community of Duck Lake, and pretty soon we had a sizable group of spectators, and a carnival atmosphere, as people parked their cars and walked home, then came back to watch. As darkness fell, we were at last out on the pavement, the wreckers left, everyone went home, and we stood wondering why the load had a ten degree list to starboard. Turns out that with all the pulling and pushing, one of the rubber snubbers that fastened the control arms of the air bag trailer suspension had broken. We fashioned a new one out of a piece cut from the trailer’s mud flap, and turned in for the night.The rest of the move back to Union was uneventful.

I should have also mentioned the DUR car that was the subject of the Brief. Each time Norman and I were up working on the 28 move, we went down to see if someone was around. We finally connected with someone and had a nice chat, but we were not in a suitable state to be invited in after a day of working on the 28. Nice to finally see photos of the inside.I noted with interest that the Brief states that there used to be a diner “that burned in the fifties.” In the early seventies when we were moving the 28, there was a matching 50’ steel trailer coach in Parma, about twelve or fifteen miles east of Albion. The car was right on Hwy 12, painted silver, and lettered SILVER DINER. It did not appear to be suitable for preservation, as it was sitting low to the ground, and half of one side had been removed when a kitchen wing was added. It did, however, have matching pressed glass upper sash, and we needed a couple replacements for the 28, so Norman made contact with the owners. They were a delightful elderly couple, who had run the diner since the twenties or thirties. Prior to that, the gentleman had worked for the LS&MS, and remembered the “big engines.” Pacifics? Hudsons? No, to him the “big engines” were the Ten Wheelers! They also had a very nice set of photos of the original paving of US 12 through town, about 1920 or so.They were quite willing to give us whatever glass we could remove from the side of the car away from the highway, so long as we replaced it with glass. Although it was evident that they would never operate the diner again, they wanted to keep it intact, and we were happy to oblige. We took some measurements and made a trip up there a couple of weeks later with three or four pieces of clear plate glass in a crate; these we swapped out for a like number of intact pressed glass panes. Since the glass bead molding was almost completely deteriorated, I pointed and puttied them like house windows. I didn’t think the car would ever make a trip again, and I suppose by now both it, and its owners, are gone.