The IRM 'L' Car Fleet Grows

A pair of new - and in this case, "new" means "42-year-old" - rapid transit cars arrived at the Illinois Railway Museum on Friday, fresh from the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA cars 2871 and 2872, a married-pair set, are 2600-series cars built in 1984 by Budd. This was one of the last orders for railway cars built by Budd, and in fact the last cars of this order were also the last rapid transit cars ever completed by the Philadelphia car builder. This particular pair went into service a couple of years before that and were just retired, making them the newest CTA cars in preservation. Many cars of this series are still in service, and with deliveries of new 7000-series cars having slowed to a trickle, some of the remaining 2600s may be in revenue service for a while yet.

With these new arrivals, the IRM collection listed on PNAERC has grown to 147 cars - second only to Seashore in quantity - of which 42 are rapid transit cars. Not coincidentally, IRM already has a CTA 2872, though it's listed on the museum's roster as Chicago Rapid Transit 2872 because it's a wooden 'L' car built in 1906 that only spent its last few years under CTA ownership. I'll also point out that 2871-2872 are the first electric cars acquired by IRM in six and a half years, which I believe is the longest such "drought" in the museum's history. On average, IRM has acquired two cars per year, every year, for its entire 73-years history. (And to be fair, the museum has been adding railroad and rubber-tired equipment to its fleet at a steady clip during these last few years.) The PNAERC list overall now stands at 2,089 pieces.