HAIL TO THE ORANGE.

It's a lot of work to get a 103 year old steel interurban car, built by J.G. Brill for the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railway, to look this good.

There's many a railway museum at which one such car would give a better impression of the railway preservation effort than what's on offer.

At the Illinois Railway Museum, however, one North Shore steel car might be upstaged by two even older wood cars, built for the Aurora Elgin and Chicago.

There are enough such cars in the fleet to roll out a three- or four-car train, should attendance warrant.  On a hot, humid day without the abandonment of Chicago Aurora and Elgin to re-enact, two will suffice.

Below the jump, we'll see an interurban train that upstages either the Brill steel or the Roarin' Elgin woods.

On rare occasions, the museum rolls out an Illinois Terminal train.  Once, those electric cars connected Peoria to St. Louis, and Bloomington to Urbana and Danville (unfortunately, never connecting to the Indiana and Ohio network that rural folk made do with before paved roads and rubber tires.)

Lead car 277 is the sole powered car on the train.  Illinois Terminal put powerful motors under it, as it was regular practice to have one powered and several trailing cars.

It was originally a wooden-bodied car with the traditional paired arched windows of early twentieth century interurban cars.  (That's also true of the Chicago Aurora and Elgin wood cars, and you see a survival of that design in the treatment of the North Shore Brills, although the larger sheets of frosted glass that carried off the impression went the way of a lot of glass.)

There's a bit of overflow seating in the baggage area.  On the interurbans, these compartments were for baby chicks and sample cases and sometimes a few cans of milk.  You see the potential for modern rapid transit cars to a similar floor plan, with the space devoted to bicycle storage?

The passenger area got Forties-style seating, lensed lamps, and forced-air ventilation, but the outlines of the traditional interurban are still evident in the window treatments.  These are steel-sheathed wood cars, which creak the way a wood car ought to.  You did notice the turnbuckles to keep the body square.

Next in the train, trailer car 518.  It's jumpered to 277, in order to permit train operation in the reverse direction, the museum demonstration railroad having no turning loops at the end.  The spacing between the cars is what you get when the train has to wrap itself around a Christmas tree.  OK, it's the Christmas tree in the courthouse square, but you get the idea!

By the time Illinois Terminal got around to modernizing the wood cars, passenger service was on the skids, thanks to that subsidized infrastructure we call Route 66, and the trailer has its original walkover seating, probably reupholstered at the museum.

I don't know whether the prototype ran with city-car style advertising above the baggage racks.  Useful way to show off the museum's collection, some are original, some reproductions.

Yes, once upon a time the interurbans offered first-class service, and a selling point for the observation platform was the absence of any cinders raining down from the locomotive, a hazard on a steam train.  Parlor car 234 is still around account Illinois Terminal converted it to a business car.  There is another Illinois Terminal business car, and an interurban sleeper, back in the car barns.

Inside, the solarium area is taking its original parlor car form.

The side-boards and bench seats suggest there was once a wardroom at that partition.  Further back, might be sleeping sections.

The Illinois Terminal train gets out rarely, and if there's rain the day it's scheduled, it probably doesn't run.

Hicks Car Works also documented the event.