General
Car #20 was one of ten interurban passenger coaches built for the Aurora Elgin and Chicago Railroad by Niles, an Ohio company. These cars were numbered with even numbers starting with #10. It seats 52 and is capable of 65 miles per hour. It is equipped with four 125 hp GE66 model traction motors. It should be noted that we limit our cars to 20 mph for safety reasons and to conserve these transportation relics.
History
This car and its nine sisters along with 20 like cars built by the John Stephenson Car Company inaugurated high speed, third rail powered interurban service from Laramie Avenue in Chicago to Wheaton and then on to Aurora in 1902 with the Elgin branch following in 1903. All this happened before the Wright Brothers made their first power airplane flight so a speed of sixty-five miles was not a speed the average person could experience on a regular basis. Our car experienced many changes in its fifty-five years of service. While 20 has a body constructed of wood it does rest on a steel frame. As built, the ride qualities of the Peckham trucks left something to be desired at these high speeds so Baldwin trucks were substituted at an early date. Also, as 20 and her sisters aged the wooden bodies began to “rack” making doors and windows hard to open and close, again because of the speeds, so every car had steel gussets installed at every bulkhead to stiffen the body, with this work done in the Wheaton Shops. When the name of the railroad was changed to the Chicago Aurora and Elgin in 1922, our car went through several different paint schemes including the last version of red and gray. Also changed over time was the removal of the arched windows over pairs of the side windows on the car. Even the interior ceiling was removed and changed to a simpler design. A railfan roster suggests that car 20 and Stephenson cousin car 36 were the only two original 1902 cars still in service at the time of abandonment in 1957. These cars also retained their original rattan covered seating until the end. As more modern steel constructed interurban cars were purchased the wooden cars were relegated to rush hour service trains to and from Wheaton and Chicago. In the post-World War II era, wood cars would only appear on the Aurora and Elgin branches on railfan excursions.
Narrative
As of 2024, car 20 has been in museum service for fifty-eight years, longer than it saw service on the old Third Rail Line it was built for. Our Chief Mechanical Officer determined that the wheels are too worn to continue in service even though everything still works. The plan is to jack up the car so the trucks can be rolled out from underneath it and then sent to a vendor to replace the wheels with new ones, a process which was done many times in the old Wheaton Shops. While we have a set of four electric powered column jacks, the museum needs to construct concrete jacking pads in order to use them. Of course, the money to replace the wheels also has to be raised. In concert with this, it is anticipated that other repairs will be done to the car so that the symbol of the Village of South Elgin will once again transport our visitors to the Castlemuir depot back in time along the Fox River.
Author: Joseph Hazinski, Curator