Hi folks,

I am a longtime fan of the TMER&L and have long lamented the lack of running TMER&L passenger interurbans that survived. Yes, I do like the 2 at IRM and the 1 that is a cottage in Ontario.

But I am wondering if there are more. In Canfield's TM on page 326 there was a photo that always intrigued me. A fan trip has stopped at the quarry and there appears to be a wrecked car. I've always wondered why it was there, which car was it and what had happened. I assume that the remains of the car has long disappeared.

I just received Milwaukee Electric Photo Album #4 and it has photos of the now flooded Mequon quarry.

On page 105 there appears to be car 1246 rolling down the side into the quarry. The caption reads "Mequon quarry scrapping car 1246, 1931." Behind it are two more 1200 series cars.

Does anyone know why TMER&L dumped their 1200 series cars in the quarry? Was there water in the quarry when they were dumped? Is it possible that there are a bunch of 1200 series interurbans in a flooded quarry? Did any of the now probably waterlogged and rusty hulks survive? Does anyone know if the local dive groups explore the quarry?

Yep, the proverbial locomotive err TMER&L interurban in a flooded quarry, but there might be some truth this time.

"Pinky, are you pondering what I am pondering?"

"I think so, Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?"

Charles

Wow, a TM fan! I had thought the species was extinct.

I am under the impression that the quarry (actually a gravel pit) was dry, and the reason the TM scrapped cars there is it was secluded enough they could burn them to reclaim the metal. Back in those days there was no restriction on burning in rural areas, and no reason not to do so. Almost all of the TM interurban fleet was composite cars with lots of wood; burning them made sense. It was then easy to cut up the remaining scrap.

I'm sure I've seen at least one picture of burned skeletons of TM cars, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Might have been an Edwin Wilson contact print.

Back forty years ago when I was active at IRM, we had a couple members who came down from Milwaukee. In particular I recall Howard Weege, who was a teacher at the Waukesha Technical Institute, which I guess was a community college/trade school. Every couple years one of Howard's students would figure out what is passion was (I'm sure it wasn't hard) and putting that together with local lore, bring him a tantalizing tale of "old green trolley cars in a gravel pit." I'm sure Howard or his sons Ralph and Don would check them out, and nothing ever came of it.

I've always been a little surprised that none of the cars wound up on farms as is common in Indiana and Ohio, but I guess the fact that the operation survived through WWII, and was too frugal to ever discard anything that could be rebuilt, kept that from happening. By the time the fleet finally went to scrap, building codes almost universally prohibited converting railroad cars to buildings, and with the post-war prosperity, nobody wanted them, anyway.

Hi Dennis,

I know that the Gravel Pit between Waukesha and Milwaukee was were many TMER&L cars were burned. Canfield's TM has several pictures of the scrapping process.

The Mequon quarry is a limestone quarry and located between Milwaukee and Port Washington. If you go to google maps, the quarries are still there and flooded. You are right, maybe they were burned. But it seems like a lot of work to push something into the quarry, burn it, and then drag it back up again.

I guess that is the reason for my inquiry.

Charles

TM 1200 cars were composite construction, made of a wood "skeleton" with metal sheathing on the sides and ends. The one exception to this are the SLCC built 1200s which appeared in the 1920s. The SLCC ones are all known to have scrapped.

When the TM rebuilt the 1200 cars, they did so in such a way that is "interesting" structually. It is essentially a new top half of the car set upon the bottom half, up to the belt rail. There is very little interconnection between the two halves. The two cars at IRM are "bowing" as a result of this "engineering."

Even if cars were pushed into the quarry and forgotten, I doubt there'd be anything left worth saving given the mostly wood construction.

Further, your "evidence" isn't evidence. It's pure speculation driven by your desire that more TM 1200s were saved. Step away, other than some photos, you have no proof that any cars were left in the quarry, or that even the captions are correct. You just have a wish that a 1200 car is at the bottom of the quarry, seemingly intact despite being submerged since the Eisenhower Administration, just waiting to be pulled out, put the pole up and go.

Instead of chasing after phantoms, if I were you, I'd support museums and organizations that preserve TM equipment and TM history, notably IRM. They have real-live TM equipment whose existence isn't speculative.

Would someone care to refresh my memory as to what a TM 1200 series car is? My TM book is packed away, and truthfully, I haven't given the TM any thought in years. I thought we were talking about the St. Louis built trailers, but it sounds like you guys are talking about motor cars; and those were all 1100's. From the rebuilt Milwaukee Northern Niles cars in the low 1100's to the built-from-scratch diner-duplexes at the high end of the series, all the TM's "modern" interurban cars were numbered somewhere in the 1100 series.

I saw something go by that needs correction... Let me preface my comments by saying that I'm the guy who was working on the side framing of the parlor car MENOMINEE some 45 years ago, and I probably know as much about the framing of these cars as anyone alive. There are some basic differences between the St. Louis built cars, such as the parlor car that still exists as a cottage in Canada, and the Kuhlman built cars such as the pair at IRM; I've never been able to inspect any of the St. Louis cars, so can't comment on them. The Kuhlman cars, however, do NOT have entirely new upper bodies, and are not bowing. The architecture of the original car had a gentle camber to the side posts above the belt rail, and this remained after rebuilding. The original oak slat interior finish is still below the windows, as are traces of the yellow paint on the posts above, and the remnant of the single centered end post still remains above the train door, at least at the rear of the car.

The Kuhlman cars were composite cars built on a frame like a gondola; below the sills is a single heavy (5/16" thick, IIRC) steel plate that ran from corner post to corner post. The car posts were bolted to the inside of these plates. After conversion to single ended, single sided cars, the ends of the left side were closed in with lighter sheet steel attached to the existing door posts. The biggest problem with the cars is they changed the window arrangement. I've never delved into the coach, 1129, but on the parlor car, wherever a post was in the way of the new window pattern, they simply cut it off, chiseled it down below the surface of the sills, and patched over it with Bondo. The sides of the new window openings were defined by new posts mortised into the existing sill. I bet there are not more than six or eight intact posts down the entire length of the car side, yet they ran that way for over two decades. The biggest problem from a preservation standpoint is the sills leaked where the old posts were cut and patched, causing extensive rot damage behind the structural plate. Essentially, the entire interior of the car is going to need to come out to do the repair. Luckily, the interior of these cars is ca. 1920 modern... big expanses of 3/8" mahogany veneered plywood, with no inlay or carved trim.

The other problem is considerable deterioration to the end framing,which is a very light weight remnant of their original streetcar configuration. These cars still have platform knees.

There is nothing there that a suitable application of money won't fix.

Hi Dennis,



Heh. Yeah. They will need some money. Do you have any idea if they have started planning the restoration? I would like to ride them at some point. And my dad would like to ride them again before he dies. If you know when the hat is being passed around...

While I do not officially speak for IRM, there appears to be no immediate restoration plan. The cars are indoors and well cared for. They would need quite a bit of work to even just complete and fix the carbodies, and that's before you get into trucks and control equipment that would have to be replaced.

On the other hand, IRM should have a Milwaukee streetcar running possibly next year, with new wheels.

I'm not aware of any plans. They will not add to the operating fleet, so would be a low priority from that viewpoint.

IRM, being an almost totally volunteer organization, many decisions are made basically on a whim... Someone becomes the "champion" of a particular project, spearheads the work,and raises the funds, often kicking off the fund raising with a gift of seed money. In this case, I hope he has deep pockets. Without that, the project will just sit, waiting patiently. At least now they are waiting under cover.

At the time I was working on the MENOMINEE (I was nineteen) coincided with a seismic shift in the way car work was done at IRM. Construction of the first building over track made it more sensible to do large team restorations, and I got pulled into other projects, all of which were necessary, and of more pressing importance. I always figured that once I became filthy rich, I'd just higher some minions to finish the MENOMINEE. Well, four decades later, I've gotten filthy, but hardly rich.