The Chicago Transit Authority recently donated four pieces of historic equipment to the Illinois Railway Museum. The first two are a semi-permanently coupled pair of CTA “L” cars built by the Budd Co. of Philadelphia in 1984, part of the final batch of cars ever built by Budd.

Cars 2871 and 2872 were originally assigned to the Blue Line before being moved to the Purple Line in 1996, the Red Line in 2000, and finally the Orange Line in 2014. The cars were rebuilt by Alstom in 2000. The two cars were retired in 2025 and have become the first of their type to be preserved.

The other two pieces of equipment are buses: a Flxible Metro-E diesel bus constructed in 1985 and a Nova Bus LFS diesel built in 2002. IRM plans to operate all four pieces of equipment at its museum in Union, Ill.