I used to be Superintendent of the East Troy Trolley Museum in East Troy, Wisconsin. We opened for the general public in May of 1972 (What is that? 43 years ago, now!) and we used Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee interurbans for our excursion rides. The first car that was readied was #757, a Standard built, 50 ton interurban car built in 1929. the second car that we restored was #763, a sister car to the #757 but we painted them differently. The first was in the last paint scheme of the RR, a red letter board and window area with a striped silver lower section. The RR called them" "Silverliners". The #763 was painted in the pre-WWII colors which were called "Greenliners" by railfans.
Since I had many happy hours at the controls of both of these cars, when 3rd Rail came out with their three car sets of these wonderful, high speed interurban cars, I had to have a set of each. The models are really great, detailed models of the original North Shore cars, and i do enjoy putting on a few miles on them on my layout, but it still doesn't replace the pleasure of actually handling the controls of the real cars! I should have been a motorman!
Incidentally, the following year we completed CNS&M #411, a former parlor/observation car, and thus we had three samples of cars from the RR. We were the first trolley museum to actually MU three of these big interurban cars for museum operation. That was a big deal to us, back then!
Paul Fischer
