Because the trolley replica in front of WMU’s Bernhard Center played a major role in their courtship, Corey Hendricks and Amy Levering used it as part of their wedding earlier this month.
They would have held the wedding in front of the trolley, but lack of room for chairs on the site required the couple to wed across the street at the Oaklands.
Corey, a process engineer at Select Millwork and an alum of IME’s manufacturing technology (MFT) program, was part of a four-man senior design team that created the full-size, historically accurate replica of the landmark Western Trolley. The project had special significance because it was a highlight of WMU’s 2003 centennial celebration.
“The Reincarnation of the Prospect Hill Trolley” project illustrated a genuine reverse engineering of the trolley’s original design, materials, and construction features in order to ensure authenticity.
With neither blueprints nor records of the original trolley, Corey and teammates Brian VanderPloeg, Aron Murphy, and Jeff Clausen used an original bench from one of the cars, archival photographs, alumni recollections, and information about an existing incline trolley out West to create the replica.
For over six months, the students sometimes spent up to 80 hours a week superimposing photo enlargements of the trolley on computer-aided design programs to determine dimensions and details. According to Corey, Amy, a senior in business management, was there to help for the entire project.
With the Western Trolley replica as a backdrop, IME’s James VanDePolder (left) and Fred Sitkins (right), advisors on the senior design project that created the trolley for the 2003 WMU Centennial, celebrated the wedding of Amy Levering, a senior in the business management program, and Corey Hendricks, a 2003 IME manufacturing technology alumnus who was part of the four-man team that created the trolley replica that was placed in front of the Bernhard Center.
Among those attending the wedding were IME professors Fred Sitkins and Jim VanDePolder, two advisors on the trolley project, which was presented at the 32nd Conference on Senior Engineering Design Projects in April 2003. The other project advisors were IME professors Tom Swartz and Betsy Aller and IME emeriti professor John Lindbeck.
From 1908 to 1948, trolley cars transported students up and down Prospect Hill on the East Campus. Before being dismantled in 1949, the Western Trolley had carried as many as 2,000 passengers a day. It was the only incline railway ever built and licensed in Michigan.
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