CTA 2400-series cars restoration
Here's a photo in our paint shop of us preparing these cars for the farewell tour in their original paint scheme.
We're sending our 2400-series railcars off into retirement with a special ceremonial last trip on Wednesday, January 21, 2015. Learn more about these cars and join us in saying "Goodbye, old friends!" after 38 years of service on the 'L'.
Info & schedule: transitchicago.com/2400farewell
The first of this series of railcars were introduced in 1976—a year where the nation was celebrating its 200th birthday. It was also the year when "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won multiple Academy Awards (including Best Picture), when Jimmy Carter was elected President, when Apple Computer Inc. was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Captain and Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together" won the Grammy for Record of the Year.
The 200 cars in this series were built by Boeing-Vertol between 1976-1978, with the car's interior and exterior designs done by industrial design firm Sundberg-Ferar, who also worked on cars for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA, DC Metro), Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA).
The cars were delivered with bold, red-white-and-blue graphics on both the sides and the end of the cars—a nod to the nation's bicentennial—and were initially introduced into Ravenswood Service (today's Brown Line) and North-South Route (roughly today's North Side Red Line and South Side Green Line, via the State Street Subway), and West-Northwest Route (today's Blue Line).
One distinguishing feature of these cars that separated them from hundreds of their most recent predecessors is that they went back to sliding doors, which later made it possible to convert them for wheelchair access under the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Previous to these cars, starting back in the 1940s, our cars were built with streetcar-like folding "blinker doors" which had sets of four narrow panels that swung inward at stops.)
While the last cars of this series ended their service on the Orange and Brown Lines, they were most associated with Green and Purple Line services since the 1990s.
Orignal From: CTA 2400-series cars restoration
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