North Shore 228 Restored

Hot on the heels of Illinois Terminal line car 1702 being outshopped by IRM, another Midwestern organization has restored and operated a piece of non-revenue equipment that hadn't run since retirement. This is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 228, a box motor (known as an "MD car," or merchandise despatch car, on the North Shore) built by Cincinnati Car Company in 1922 and just completed at the East Troy Electric Railroad. It's shown above in a photo from this Facebook group depicting a test run a few weeks ago; its official debut was this weekend, like IT 1702 during a private event.

Car 228 was one of an ill-fated trio of electric cars that made their way to the Indiana Railway Museum in Westport, Indiana, around 1963. The three cars - 228, North Shore combine 250, and Chicago Aurora & Elgin steel-sheathed wood coach 318 - were purchased from the Westport group by The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society (TWERHS), which at the time operated over the East Troy line, around 1971. The two North Shore cars made it to TWERHS intact, but car 318 had its ends crushed during a Penn Central switching accident and was later scrapped for parts in Mukwonago.

The two North Shore cars were in rough shape, though. Combine 250 was acquired by IRM when TWERHS folded in 1988 and later scrapped; MD car 228 stayed in East Troy and work on rebuilding it began but was suspended for some 25 or 30 years. In 2022, though, the MD car went into ETER's new shop building in Mukwonago to complete the job. Of the five North Shore MD cars preserved, this is one of two that is operational and is the only one to have undergone a complete restoration.