Friday, October 28, 2011















I found this photo taken in downtown Chicago Illinois USA, at My Link Page Dave's Electric Railroads. Located to the right of Your computer screen at www.davesrailpix.com

The Chicago Transit Authority began operations on October 1st, 1947, after raising the funding to purchase the Chicago Surface Lines Company ( Streetcars and buses.), and the Chicago Rapid Transit Company.

During the 1960's, the CTA found itself quickly approaching 20 years in operation. Although "New" 6000 and 550 Series lightweight rapid transit cars were built during the 1950's using recycled streamlined PCC streetcar components from retired postwar streetcars, the CTA was still using rapid transit cars built during the teens and 20's in daily operations.

These cars that are seen here in a 1960's era photo taken in downtown Chicago, were built in 1964 by the Pulman Standard Car Company of Chicago. These cars were numbered in the 2000 series, and operated in daily service until the early 1990's.
These were Chicago's "First" trully modern rapid transit cars at the time, and featured picture windows, powder blue interiors and air conditioning.

These cars were originally painted in the CTA mint green and alpine white colors when delivered as viewed in this photo, but by the mid 1970's, began recieving forst a red, white and blue with silver Bi Centenial color scheme, and later a plain alluminum and dark gray color scheme.

The Illinois Railway Museum in Union Illinois www.irm.org , owns two of these cars and has them on display at their CTA 50th Avenue rapid transit station from Cicero Illinois, while the CTA retained two of these, and painted them in to a dark green color scheme.
These are used by the CTA for special occasions, and are kept at their Skokie Shops facility on Oakton Street in Skokie Illinois.

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