[milwaukee-electric] Re: Milwaukee slums during the 1940s and afterward

[Gary Schnabl]

On 11/9/2010 9:31 AM, Scott Greig wrote:
> In this case, the owner WAS the motorman.  Maeder was a longtime trolley fan who enjoyed periodically operating trains on "HIS" railroad.  However, I don't believe that he had ever gone through a proper training and instruction program like TMER&L (and TMER&T) had used.
>
> After years of studying the events of the day, my conclusion is that, at some point after speaking with Tennyson at Brookdale Siding (where he was trying to sort out the seriously-delayed NMRA specials) Maeder got an idea in his head that if he could catch all the signals just right, and get up to West Junction before LeRoy Equitz came south with the next charter train, he could make up his lost time coming back downtown.
>
> To me it was very telling that Maeder violated his own operating rules (as well as the orders he had imposed on the charter trains that morning) by telling John Heberling to let him through at Oklahoma Avenue.  I suspect that his mind was focused on getting ahead to the Junction, and that he either never looked at the signal, or looked at it and "saw" what he was hoping to see.
>
> Scott.
So, the account that Mader was thrown free from the car by some 
engineer/motorman (who unfortunately died...) was probably fictitious? 
What did the surviving passengers say about that?

It appears that two Labor Day holiday weekends were dark days for 
Speedrail. What was the accident of 1949 all about? Were there other 
less spectacular mishaps on Speedrail (near misses, etc.)?
-- 

Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...