PCC collision in Boston

Well this isn't good. Two of the air-electric PCC cars on the Mattapan-Ashmont line in Boston were damaged in a rear-end collision; photos appear to show that 3260 was the front car (the one run into) while 3262 was definitely the rear car and had its entire front end stove in. Thankfully nobody was killed however there were a number of injuries. I'm hoping that everyone affected recovers quickly. Both cars involved have been marked on the PNAERC roster as out of service. The photo above, of 3262 in happier days, was taken during a visit of mine in March 2016.

What's the voltage?

I'm always looking to fill in more missing data and a question posted on RyPN yesterday about the voltage used by Reading MU cars made me check the database - and I realized that I didn't have any voltage listed for any of them. Oops. The rule I use is that voltage is assumed to be 600vDC unless otherwise stated, but the Reading used 11,000vAC. So the existing Reading MU cars - all 29 of them - now have the correct voltage noted.

Here's a piece of trivia for you: the highest voltage for any equipment on the list is 50,000 volts. What's odd is that there are two locomotives on the list designed for this voltage and, while they're in different countries and built for very different railroads, they're both numbered 6001 - the only two pieces of equipment on the list with that number. Black Mesa & Lake Powell 6001 is preserved in Arizona while BC Rail 6001 is preserved a thousand miles north in British Columbia. Odd.

Update on the Angeleno Heights Birney

I started working up a "mystery car" post but, as sometimes happened, with enough Googling I was able to answer at least some of my own questions and locate some fairly current information.

The car in question is Los Angeles Railway 1030, a standard off-the-shelf Birney built by St. Louis in 1920 and retired in 1946. It's listed on the PNAERC roster under the ownership of the Angeleno Heights Trolley Line and the last solid information I had on it dated back to about 2005. But I stumbled across a GoFundMe page on the car, still under the name of Angeleno Heights Trolley, working to raise money to store and restore the car. A few photos showing the car's current condition - definitely deteriorated but more complete than you'd think and lacking obvious major body rust or damage - are included. The page also has an update saying the car is safely stored with LA Metro, though I'm not sure where exactly that would place it. But I'm guessing that car 1030, shown below in transit, is safe for the time being.

I had been under the impression that car 1030 was used in filming the movie "The Changeling," which was set in the 1920s and came out back in 2008, along with a second Birney. However it appears fairly obvious that this is not the case, given the long-term deterioration evident on car 1030. It appears that only one Birney was used for the filming: the Union College Birney from Lincoln, Nebraska, listed on the roster as Omaha Lincoln & Beatrice 4. I should note that this car's identity is somewhat in doubt; though claimed by the college as ex-OL&B 4, a statement some years back from Ira Schreiber suggested that this is actually an ex-Virginia Electric Power Birney and not the ex-Baltimore, ex-OL&B car its current owners claims. How (and why) a Virginia Birney would have gotten out to Nebraska, I'm not sure. Unfortunately current information on the Lincoln car is difficult to come by and it seems to spend its time stored out of the public eye.

And here's a photo of the Lincoln car back in 2008 during its moment in the spotlight.

Roanoke survivor

The streetcar under the tarp at this link is the Roanoke Railway & Electric car owned by the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum, which suffered a devastating fire about two months ago now. Initially there was some speculation about whether the car had been destroyed but written accounts stated that it had survived, and indeed here it is, wrapped in old billboard coverings and - according to the caption - awaiting transportation to a new site. The CC&TM website indicates that the organization is being merged into the Virginia Museum of Transportation across town, which is separately listed on the PNAERC list as it owns two mainline electric locomotives and a Washington DC streetcar, but for the moment CC&TM appears to be doing its own fundraising as a distinct entity. 

The streetcar is in rough shape, as it was acquired after service as a house that included removal of part or all of one entire side of the car, but it's the only Roanoke streetcar preserved in the state. Unfortunately the museum lost most of its restored buses in the fire; this photo, taken from the concrete pad that used to be the museum's storage garage, shows what's left of the museum.

Phoenix Trolley Museum closes

As shown above, the Phoenix Trolley Museum (listed on the PNAERC list under its other name, the Arizona Street Railway Museum) has closed. It's not out of business but it has lost its lease at Deck Park on the north side of downtown Phoenix because the city is renovating that space. The museum has been planning to move its collection to a storage site about a mile away but it's unclear what the long-term plans are. The museum owns three electric cars: two 1920s American-built lightweight cars from Phoenix, one restored and one not, and a 250-volt industrial switcher from the Phelps-Dodge operation in Douglas. All three are now noted as "stored" rather than on display.

Mystery car: the Dayton spaghetti streetcar

The latest "mystery streetcar" is the one shown above, which is ensconced in a Spaghetti Warehouse in Columbus, Ohio. A lot of these spaghetti restaurant streetcars are ex-Dallas 700-series cars, which were (and maybe still are) somewhat plentiful as bodies in the Lone Star State, but this example is definitely of a different design. It looks to be a double-truck Birney, which unfortunately means it could be from just about anywhere. Anyone have any ideas?

Kansas City PCC to Become Ice Cream Shop

Trolling the Internet for news on preserved electric cars, as I sometimes do, I came across this article from September about Kansas City Public Service 551, which from November 2006 until March 2016 was on display under its own pavilion next to Kansas City Union Station. Ironically enough, though, redevelopment of the Union Station area prompted by the new light rail line necessitated the car's removal and for a year and a half it was put into storage by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority.

That seems to have come to an end and the car has been plinthed at the corner of 5th & Delaware in the River Market section of Kansas City, along the light rail line (as can be seen from the above photo) near the other end of the route from its former KCUS home. It sounds like the car is destined to become an ice cream shop, which is unfortunate. It had previously been restored to more-or-less in-service appearance inside and out, as I understood, though it may still suffer the significant frame and body rot that led the Western Railway Museum to deaccess it back in 2006. (This is the last of the Kansas City PCCs sold to Toronto; one other car that went from K.C. to Toronto to San Francisco, as did this one, was acquired around 1982 by the Illinois Railway Museum but scrapped soon afterwards because it was so badly rusted out from its years in Toronto that the step wells were falling off.) PCC cars turned into ice cream shops have also not fared well traditionally, with a couple in Canada and New York having been scrapped in recent years upon failure of the ice cream business, though to every rule there are exceptions.

Anyway, according to the article the ice cream stand is to be called "Trolley Tom" so that's what I'm listing as the car's new owner. That name will be updated as necessary if and when the business opens.

Sand Springs car running again

A post on our sister blog contains the information that Sand Springs 68, the only surviving piece of traction equipment from that line, is now once again operational after being out of service for several years to have wheels replaced. Car 68 is quite historic, as its series of cars is regarded by some as being the first true lightweight interurban cars ever built (the car weighs in at only 26,000 lbs or so). It was acquired by IRM in the late 1960s from a junkyard, mostly complete but sans motors and controllers, and was rebuilt extensively by the museum over the course of several decades. The car's record has been updated to reflect its operational status.

Asheville 117

The latest "mystery car" about which I'm looking for information is Asheville 117, a 1927 Brill Birney body that last I knew was owned by Charlotte Trolley. Charlotte Trolley started as a small volunteer-run heritage trolley line that morphed into a government-funded heritage trolley line, and eventually that morphed into a full-blown light rail system with a few of the government-funded heritage cars running over a portion of the route. The original volunteer-run fleet of historic cars was left out. The "mother car," Charlotte 85, is now at the railroad museum in Spencer, a Birney from Virginia went to Colorado and a Red Arrow car was recently sold to Branford. A Connecticut Company car body was placed on display in the new "Powerhouse Center" in Charlotte. But whatever happened to the Asheville Birney body? It's the car in the right foreground of the above photo and I vaguely recall seeing it in person around 15 years ago. The old car barn seems to have been converted into a coffee shop of some sort so I don't think it's there. Is it still in existence? If so, anyone know where it is? (I should also note that an identical car, Asheville 119, is preserved elsewhere in North Carolina.)

SOLVED: See the comments for the skinny on car 117, which apparently is indeed still in storage somewhere in Charlotte. It sounds like its future is somewhat in limbo at the moment but there are parties interested in preserving it in the area.

Middletown photos

Joel Salomon has been kind enough to send along some photos taken recently in the (relatively) new barn at the Middletown & Hummelstown. Most of these photos are of Lewistown & Reedsville 23, the center-door car that was moved to the M&H within the past couple of years.

The car appears to be in good shape, as car bodies go. The last photo shows Wendell Dillinger, owner of the M&H, standing next to the car with its L&R number clearly visible.

 Also in the barn are a steam engine, a pair of Rio open cars (the one on the right in the above photo is the single-trucker, which is capable of operation using the towed generator shown), and a Red Arrow 80-series car which has had its trucks regauged to standard gauge. The M&H owns three 80-series cars and I'm afraid I actually don't know which one this is.

Also stored in the barn is Brooklyn semiconvertible 4550, built by Laconia in 1906. This car had a strange post-preservation history that supposedly took it to somewhere called Tomorrowland before it later spent time at the Edaville Railroad in Massachusetts. By 1980 it was at Station Square in Pittsburgh, which fixed it up for display, and then when that collection was liquidated in 2000 the car went to the M&H.

Lewistown & Reedsville car moved

A recent visit to central Pennsylvania allowed me to confirm something that I had suspected, namely that the last surviving Lewistown & Reedsville car has indeed been retrieved from its former location in McVeystown, Pennsylvania and relocated at the Middletown & Hummelstown (thanks to Joel Salomon for the information). The car has been owned by the M&H for a number of years but it wasn't until recently that it was moved there. I'm not sure precisely when it was moved, unfortunately.

This is a fairly historic car; it ran briefly in New Jersey, a state from which there are very few interurban/suburban cars preserved. For most of its service life it operated on the L&R so it's a similarly rare example of a survivor from a small-town Pennsylvania street railway. Even its design is unusual. Its record has been updated to reflect that it's no longer stored off-site by the M&H.

UPDATE: Joel Salomon writes to confirm that this car's number is definitely L&R 23. He has also sent a Brill Magazine article about these cars which is extremely fascinating. It includes truck type (Brill 27MCB2) and dimensional and weight information on these cars. Unfortunately there's no control/motor information but that may turn up. The information in the article has been added to car 23's listing on the PNAERC site.

Miscellaneous updates

A couple of updates have been made to cars on the PNAERC list. First, courtesy of an HRA end-of-year roundup comes news that South Shore 106 in Boone, Iowa has been returned to operation for the first time in some two decades. The car had formerly been listed as "displayed inoperable" but this has been suitably updated. This brings to three the number of museums with operational South Shore cars; of the other two, IRM (like Boone) runs its using the original pantographs while East Troy runs its cars much more frequently using retrofitted trolley poles for ease of operation.

And via e-mail Walt Stafa points out that West Penn 832's listing has been perpetrating a falsehood, namely that the car's trucks are Brill 76E2's, which they are not. Oops!! They're actually a Cincinnati design, probably unique to this order, for which I cannot find an official designation. So lacking better information I'm calling them Cincinnati Arch Bars.

Hydro Electric Power Commission

I'm always on the lookout for more information, more data, to fill in the gaps. One of the hundreds of organizations listed among the "past or present owners" is the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario, which at one time owned three steeplecab locomotives that eventually made it into preservation. Two were built for HEPC by Westinghouse/National Steel Car and are now preserved in Ontario while the third was bought secondhand from a western New York interurban line and eventually made its way to Warehouse Point. Anyway, I managed to find this website with some information on what HEPC was and why it owned these locomotives for such a short time. Imagine buying a fleet of steeplecabs bigger than most interurbans ever owned just for a construction project.

CTA acquires more 6000s

The head of the Chicago Transit Authority's heritage fleet program, Graham Garfield, has posted on Facebook at this link (should work regardless of whether you have an account) the news that CTA 6711-6712 have been acquired from the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis. Car 6712 arrived in Chicago on Tuesday the 28th with car 6711 soon to follow. This brings the CTA's historic collection up to a total of fourteen cars, which includes two 4000s, four 6000s, and eight 2400s.

The collection includes both the newest and oldest sets of 6000s preserved. This set of 6700s, built in 1959 at the tail end of 6000-series car production, was retired in 1992 and acquired by MOT in 1993 but never ran in St. Louis. The cars were stored in the MOT barn until this month but in the last two or three years the museum had been slowly stripping them for parts to use on CTA 44, which is regular use on the museum's electric line. It's thought that most essential components remain on the 6711-6712 though and the CTA should be able to restore them to service to operate with their other set, acquired recently from Fox River.

Phoenix 44 lives!

What once was thought lost now is found. Thanks to the Old Pueblo Trolley e-newsletter - and Richard Schauer, who forwarded me a copy - I have learned that Phoenix Street Railway 44 is still in existence. Car 44 is the eldest of the three surviving PSR cars and the only one of the three that was not part of the 1928 order for American-built lightweight cars that closed out streetcar service in the city in 1948. Rather, car 44 - which is only a body, and a pretty decrepit one at that - was a 1913-built California car (though it may have been rebuilt as a closed car - see here). A lot about it I don't know, including when it was acquired by the Arizona Street Railway Museum in Phoenix, but for years it was stored in their small barn next to the pride of their fleet, PSR 116.

However when I visited ASRM in late 2016 I found that car 44 had disappeared at some point in the preceding few years, its spot assumed by PSR 504, a sister to car 116 that has the unusual distinction of being (I believe) the only streetcar preserved in the country that once served as a monkey house at the zoo. Anyhow, given car 44's poor condition I assumed it had been scrapped. But I was wrong and it has turned up in the collection of Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson. It was recently moved to their new building in South Tucson where it is stored safely indoors. OPT has a larger collection of cars than ASRM, a collection that includes a smattering of foreign equipment, but car 44 is their only native Arizona streetcar. If anyone knows exactly when it was moved to Tucson I'd be interested to know.

As for ASRM, they are in the process of being evicted from their longtime home at Deck Park on the north side of downtown Phoenix. This was always a claustrophobic location and permitted the museum only a two-track barn and a "main line" about 400' long. So given the impetus to move to more expansive digs, they have chosen... not to! The museum is apparently moving to an even smaller lot about a mile away in a light industrial area. I hope that their decision to eschew the potential of a larger property further away from the city center in preference for a more confined, but central, location turns out better than it has for some others.

NYC locomotive compressors

A recent discussion revealed some interesting information about New York Central electric locomotives and, more specifically, their air compressors. Talk about a niche interest! There are four NYC electric locomotives preserved: three of the iconic S-motors and one T-motor. Until recently I only had air compressor information for 115 (PC 4715) at the Illinois Railway Museum, which was fitted with a more modern Gardner-Denver pump later in its life (this pump is actually current in use on South Shore 803 but that's a different story. But Bill Wulfert provided some information on pumps used on various NYC locomotives from 1951 spec sheets:

S-3 - 1 x CP-26A
T-1, T-2 - 1 x CP-26A
T-3, Q - 1 x CP-26C2
P-1A - 2 x CP-35B1
P-2A - 2 x CP-35A
R-2 - 2 x CP-26C7

It's too bad none of the P-motors or R-2s was saved; the P-motors were real classics and the R-motors, while certainly more homely, did lead interesting lives that lasted into the 1970s on the South Shore. Anyway, the record for the one surviving T-motor has been updated to show a CP-26C2 though I'm admittedly not certain that it still has this type. A video taken of S-motor 100 seems to show a more modern type, likely also a Gardner-Denver, so that locomotive has had that added to its listing. That leaves S-motor 113 at St. Louis, which may have a Gardner-Denver or may still have its original CP-26A. Anyone know for sure?

As a trivia tidbit, none of the four NYC electrics is operational. But it hasn't always been that way in preservation; 115/4715 did operate a handful of times in the late 1980s at the Illinois Railway Museum courtesy of a South Shore pantograph grafted onto its roof. Unfortunately it was only running on two motors, one having been blown up prior to retirement, and after a few years another failed, so it hasn't run since. Photos of this spectacle are pretty rare but I do vaguely recall seeing it for myself at the time.

Reading MU car confirmed scrapped

So back in 2000 my father and I did a driving tour of several trolley museums in the northeast. We hit Halton County, Warehouse Point, Seashore, Branford, Electric City (at that time the tracks ended just past the tunnel - they've come a long way since!), and Brookins. On the way home we decided to exit I-80 in Danville, PA to gas up and about halfway down the off-ramp we spotted a Reading MU car, of all things, sitting alongside the expressway. Of course we investigated; the car (shown above in a photo by yours truly) had been brought in from a failed hotel in Wilkes-Barre and was being incorporated into a planned historic village. A few laborers were working on fixing the thing up for use as hotel rooms. We peeked inside, where the old Wilkes-Barre hotel furnishings were still evident. It was pretty lurid, with red carpet and mirrors on the ceilings as I recall. The car had been "lettered" with room numbers but under the green paint you could still see its original Reading car number: 805.

Anyway, sometime between 2008 and 2011 the car disappeared from Google Street View so I had moved it from the preserved list to my list of "mystery cars." A recent post on RyPN, however, confirms that the car - along with an adjacent freight car or two - was indeed scrapped back in 2011. It wasn't anything terribly historic, as there are plenty other Reading MU cars around, but it's good to know for certain.

Work begun on PTC Peter Witt

Word comes from Bruce Wells of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum that restoration work is starting on PTC 8042, a Peter Witt acquired by the museum in 2005 from the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton. Of the four surviving Philadelphia Peter Witts, this 1923 car is the second eldest, slightly older than car 8530 (privately owned) and car 8534 (still owned by ECTM in Scranton) but newer than car 6618 at Seashore, which was rebuilt from a 1916 "Nearside" car. Keith Bray, who has done impressive work in recent years on cars at Scranton, National Capital, and Baltimore among others, is working on roof repairs to car 8042. The car is said to be largely sound, and is entirely complete, but does need some repair work in localized areas. I believe the plan is indeed to make the car fully operational so that it can join PTM's other regular PTC standard car, double-ender 5326, in service.

Electric City updates

I've received some updates on equipment at the Electric City Trolley Museum courtesy of an RyPN user who goes by the handle "6-18003." The most photogenic of these changes is shown above: Delaware Electric Power 120, which I believe is the only preserved car from the Wilmington, Delaware city system, is now once again operational. This attractive little single-trucker used to run at the old Penn's Landing Trolley operation but it's been a while since it saw use. For a while it was stored in Buckingham but was moved to Scranton about five years ago.

Other updates include progress on Scranton "Electromobile" 505, which has had the "frame only" notation removed. Steel work on the car is substantially done and work is beginning on rebuilding the wooden components of the body. The car is also being readied for its original trucks and WH 510A motors. I'm still looking for control and brake valve information on the car though.

And finally, a slight correction was made to Third Avenue Railway System 651, the open car at Scranton that saw later use on the Five Mile Beach Electric. Its motors were WH 56's once but they're long gone so it will be fitted with GE 80A motors out of a scrapped snow sweeper. (And it will only have two of them as it's got Maximum Traction trucks!) This change has been noted.

Updates to Cleveland center-door cars

It may not be that fascinating in the grand scheme of things, but a discussion over the weekend concerning the brakes on Shaker Heights Rapid Transit car 18 (shown above in a photo from around 2009) revealed that I was missing brake information on several of the eight preserved Cleveland center-door cars. However it appears that these cars all had SME brakes with M18A brake valves, so I've updated the various cars on the list with that information. (The exceptions are 024, rebuilt as a line car by GCRTA, and 031, modernized with a Peter Witt door configuration by SHRT and later rebuilt as a wire greaser - anyone know for sur eon those two?) I'm always looking to fill in blanks like this. Anyone know what an M18A brake valve is? Other than the Shaker cars the only examples on the PNAERC list seem to be a few cars in California and one "trailer puller" in St. Louis.

Terrible news from Roanoke

It appears that the Commonwealth Coach & Trolley Museum in Roanoke was devastated by an overnight fire this past evening, as reported here. The museum is primarily a bus museum but owns one Roanoke streetcar body (or maybe two*). The brick building that was used as the museum's primary storage garage appears to have been completely destroyed by the fire, with only the exterior brick walls left standing and the roof collapsed in on the buses stored inside. It's not obvious from Google Street View and overhead photos whether the streetcar was stored outside; it looks like it was stored outside under a tarp but it's tough to tell for sure. If it was stored outside it may have survived; if it was indoors then it almost certainly didn't.

It's impossible not to think of the parallels with the National Capital fire that took place back in 2003 and destroyed a significant part of that museum's historic collection, including several unique and fully-restored pieces of equipment. I'm not familiar with the CC&TM's bus collection, nor would I be able to readily identify the significance of whatever pieces were lost, but it's undoubtedly a bad day for preservation. From the perspective of the PNAERC list I hope to find out at some point what exactly happened to the museum's streetcar body. UPDATE: an article here says that the museum's streetcar body did, in fact, survive the fire. It's not clear but the car may have been moved to a different location, possibly to the Virginia Museum of Transportation across town.

*There were until recently two Roanoke streetcars listed on the PNAERC list as owned by CC&TM, both unidentified as to fleet number, one built in 1917 and one in 1927. However the 1927 car has not been listed on the museum's website for some years and is thought to have been scrapped. Anyone know for sure?

"Baltimore" car back in San Francisco

Thanks to the Market Street Railway blog, we've got an update on the latest news with the Muni PCC fleet: namely that car 1063, the "Baltimore" car, is back from its latest Brookville rebuild. (This is what, maybe the car's third major rebuild following the 1980s SEPTA GOH and 1995 MK rebuilding jobs?) Anyway, the car is no longer in simplified National City Lines yellow and grey but is now in the much more attractive prewar Baltimore livery of blue-green and cream with an orange belt rail. The post makes it clear that the photographs are color-shifted and that the actual car is much less blue than the photos make it look.

In turn, car 1061, the "Pacific Electric" car, has been transported to Brookville for its rebuilding job. Both 1061 and 1063 have had their records updated in the PNAERC list.

Pittsburgh PCC numbering history corrected

The latest post on Bruce Wells' "Weakly Reporting" blog has some interesting information on the Pittsburgh PCC preserved at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center in Pittsburgh. The car was retired in 2000, some 13 years after it was completely remanufactured as PAT 4007. The Pittsburgh 4000s were said to be rebuilt PCC cars but most of their components, including most of the exterior sheathing and most or all of the electrical and mechanical equipment under the floor, was constructed new in the 1980s. However as I understand it each car did receive some vital components from a particular 1700-series 1949-built predecessor.

A while back I tracked down a roster showing which 1700-series car had been turned into which 4000-series car. But there were some oddities and at least one 4000-series car didn't have a predecessor listed at all. For car 4007 the original number listed was 1729, and apparently earlier this year when the car at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center was repainted from later PAT livery into earlier Pittsburgh Railways livery, Bruce and the PTM crew (who helped with this cosmetic makeover) used the same source material I did because the car ended up numbered as 1729.

However it appears this is wrong! Documentation from the 1980s has since turned up which suggests that car 1719, not 1729, was the one heavily rebuilt as PAT 4007. So the car's record on the PNAERC list has been updated and Bruce's post states the car itself will be renumbered next year.

Windsor car body to be restored

A newspaper article here that was linked from RyPN suggests that the city of Windsor, Ontario has decided to fund the restoration (cosmetic, presumably) of Sandwich Windsor & Amherstberg 351, a body that was recently donated by an individual to the city. The car originally ran on Staten Island; more information is at this post. As part of this decision the car's donation to the city was also accepted, so it has been updated from being privately owned to now being owned by the City of Windsor.

Winona streetcar in service

More good news comes from the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and in particular from MSM's Excelsior site. It appears that Winona 10, subject of a restoration project stretching back over more than a decade, has been completed and cleared for public service. The car ran for the Heritage Rail Alliance meeting a couple of weeks ago and a photo (above) is now featured on the MSM website. As such, its condition has been appropriately updated in the PNAERC roster.

This is just the most recent of MSM's "chicken coop" restorations, joining Duluth 78 and Twin Cities 1239 (both also located at Excelsior) in that distinction. In fact, MSM now has fewer unrestored car bodies than restored ones, an admirable accomplishment! The Winona car was rebuilt using a truck acquired from Trolleyville that originally came from Lancaster, Ohio. It's what I would consider a pre-Birney single-trucker, meaning not simply that it was built before the Birney but that it's a transition design with an arched roof and steel or semi-steel construction. There aren't a lot of examples of these around and I think that this car may be the only one currently operational.

Scranton 324 progress

One of the more remarkable traction restoration projects going on right now is Scranton Transit 324, which started out as an unusual artifact in its own right. Built as a rather early double-truck car in 1903, it was heavily rebuilt in 1916 with an arched roof and steel sides. It survived as a body and was scooped up by the Electric City Trolley Museum in 2000. Over the last couple of years it has undergone a startling transformation, with its body torn down to the frame and totally rebuilt (due in large part to Keith Bray, who has contributed to a number of car restoration efforts in the mid-Atlantic region). Streetcars that were so heavily modernized in the company shops were not uncommon at one time but aren't very well represented in preservation so this car is pretty significant. (It's also a flashier paint job than 99% of the other streetcars out there!)

Anyway, until now it has been listed on PNAERC as a body, but the photo above showed up on the ECTM website at some point recently and proves that the car is now on its trucks. So I've updated the list to reflect that it now has Brill 27G trucks and WH 101 motors installed (at least I believe that's what's under the car now). It looks like it's still waiting for controllers but I'm sure those aren't far off and they may actually be installed already.

TARS car restoration work

While there are no fewer than 23 cars preserved from the Third Avenue Railway System in New York, there are relatively few of the panel-ended deck-roof cars that were so closely associated with the company for decades. Of extant TARS cars on the PNAERC list a dozen - more than half - are 1930s-era arch-roof cars that were later sold for overseas use while another five are snow sweepers. Of the other six, three are double-truck closed cars and all three of these are stored in complete but poor condition, victims of benign neglect. At least, that has been the case - car 884, a 1909  Brill convertible and one of the earliest acquisitions by Branford (the photo above shows it around the time of its preservation in 1948), is now the subject of a restoration project. The car was operational until the recent hurricanes that flooded Branford, and had been capable of propelling itself for occasional switch moves. Currently the car is being given an exterior paint job and some interior work although the full scope of the project isn't clear at this point. But it's good to see this rather historic car "under restoration" and not just in dead storage.

Pittsburgh PCC repainted

A Pittsburgh 4000-series PCC rebuild, car 4007, has been repainted in its "prehistory" Pittsburgh Railways colors of red and cream and has been given back its original number, PRys 1729. This is one of the cars that was heavily overhauled in the 1980s and acquired a mostly-new body and new trucks among other things at that time. However the car retained some core components from predecessor car 1729, so it has been classified on the PNAERC roster as a heavy rebuild rather than a new-build. Regardless, the car has been plinthed at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center (formerly listed on PNAERC as the Schoolhouse Art Center) in suburban Bethel Park near Pittsburgh since 2000. It lost its number early in its static display career, though, at the request of a family whose relative had been killed in an accident that involved this car. Presmably, repainting it into Pittsburgh Railways colors and returning it to its earlier number doesn't conflict with this request.

CTA "L" cars added to roster

One of the more unexpected developments in historic preservation in Chicago in recent years has been the establishment by the Chicago Transit Authority of an "historic fleet" of vintage transit equipment. The CTA has maintained a pair of 1920s-era 4000-series cars since the 1970s, but other than those two cars the system has steadfastly declined to preserved other examples of its history. This isn't unusual; in fact New York is the only rail transit system in the country that seems interested in preserving more than a light sampling of its own historic rolling stock as it reaches retirement age. The CTA actually did have a collection of historic rolling stock until 1985, but in that year the historic collection was transferred to area museums (mostly IRM although one car went to Fox River). And the recent retirement of the 1960s-era Budd-built 2200-series cars, which were fan favorites of a sort due to their outdated blinker doors, did not prompt the CTA to keep any for preservation.

But things seemed to change in 2015. For the retirement of the 2400-series Boeing-built cars from passenger service in January 2015, the CTA repainted an entire eight-car train into their as-built red/white/blue colors. After that happened the repainted train was squirreled away and before long it - and the 1920s 4000s - were announced as the nucleus of a new historic fleet. Three buses were also added to the fleet and in August of this year a pair of 6000s were purchased from Fox River.

Anyway, it's taken me a while, but I've finally added those eight 2400-series cars to the PNAERC roster. The CTA itself has designated them for preservation per its website and they are being well maintained and available for use in historic operations (such as the CTA's 70th anniversary celebrations last weekend). The list is here. The CTA also operates a number of these Boeing-built cars in work service but those are not on the list as they're recently retired and in utility service.

BCER interurban car restoration completed

News from the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society comes along that British Columbia Electric Railway 1304, dubbed the "Connaught" because of its claim to fame that it once carried the Duke of Connaught, has seen major restoration work completed. This car was acquired from the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society in 2009, moved to Surrey at that time, and has been undergoing a full rebuilding for most of the time since. FVRHS has established quite the reputation for restoring and preserving BCER interurban cars; of the seven interurbans from that line currently preserved, three (including three out of the four operational examples) are in Surrey including the two unique cars, 1207 and 1304, alongside their regular runner 1225. For an organization that didn't exist for several decades after the BCER quit, they've done an impressive job of acquiring and restoring equipment from that railway.

Puget Sound Electric car donated

The last surviving car from the Puget Sound Electric in Washington, car 523 (St. Louis, 1907) has been donated the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie. Earlier this week it was trucked from Petaluma, California, where it had been privately owned by Paul Class and stored with the Petaluma Trolley collection, to Snoqualmie. The news comes from the Snoqualmie Valley Record.

Car 523 is the only survivor from the PSE. Its post-preservation history is a little uncertain, to me at least. It was retired early, in 1929, and thereafter served as a yard office on the Tacoma Municipal Belt for some period. Eventually it was acquired by Paul Class and I think was located in Glenwood, Oregon for a time before making its way to Petaluma a decade or so ago. Any further information on this car's history in the last few decades would be appreciated.

As for NWRM, this is the only electric car of theirs currently on the PNAERC roster but they have been involved obliquely with traction preservation for decades. For a time in the 1980s and 1990s they owned a Kennecott Copper steeplecab, but that was cut up in 2000. And a private collection of several electric cars in various stages of collapse is located just off of NWRM property with a track connection to the museum's line. These cars are listed on the roster under private ownership.

Rhode Island Company

I'm always on the lookout for decent rosters and equipment history paperwork on electric railways about which I don't know much. This past weekend I picked up an old Branford publication which was essentially a roster of the Rhode Island Company, the street railway in Providence. I was able to correct several records in the list, as there are four cars preserved that are ex-Rhode Island Company. The book pointed out that RICo was only the street railway company from 1902 to 1919; after that time it was United Electric Railways while before 1902 it was the Union Railroad and possibly some other predecessor companies. The germane thing is that RICo 61 at Branford, the only pre-1902 car preserved from Providence, was indeed built for Union Railroad.

Of the four preserved Providence cars, two (the aforementioned single-trucker and the "emergency car" pictured above) are at Branford; a snow plow is at Seashore; and as of only a few years ago, a standard double-truck deck-roof car is owned by an antique automobile restorer in Providence. This car, UER 1068, had its body completely restored around 2006-2008 but to my knowledge it has just been sitting at the owner's garage since then. Hopefully the restoration was done correctly (no 2x4 framing, etc); it would be nice to see that car end up at a trolley museum and run again someday.

Los Angeles LRV to be preserved?

An article posted on Los Angeles Curbed.com suggests that LACMTA 100, the first light rail vehicle built for the new Blue Line to Long Beach back in 1989 when traction returned to the city, is going to be set aside for preservation. The car is a type referred to by LACMTA (Metro) as a P865 and was built in 1989 by Nippon-Sharyo. It's the oldest of the five classes of light rail cars currently in use on the Metro system. According to Trolleyville.com, with new P3010 class cars being delivered, the first of the 1989 cars was sent to scrap in June and retirements are continuing regularly with the goal of retiring the entire original series of cars during the coming year.

If car 100 is indeed preserved by the City of Long Beach as planned, and if any others of this series are likewise preserved by museums, it will be only the third type of light rail vehicle to enter preservation. Earlier types include the infamous Boeing-Vertol LRV, of which a handful of examples remain extant from both operators, Muni and MBTA; and the original 1981 Siemens U2 light rail cars built for San Diego which arguably ushered in the modern era of startup light rail systems, of which a handful have been preserved in California and Pennsylvania. Other early light rail cars, including the 1980 Bredas in Cleveland, the 1983 Tokyu cars in Buffalo, the 1985 Siemens cars in Pittsburgh, and the 1980 "K cars" in Philadelphia (though they're more streetcars than light rail cars), remain in daily service in their respective cities. Thus far I'm not aware that any series of light rail car has been retired without an example being preserved.

Philadelphia PCC cars for sale

News comes from Craigslist, via RyPN, that the six SEPTA PCC cars stored in northeast Philadelphia are for sale. These cars were purchased by an individual in 1996 and for a few years were stored in an empty lot at Swanson & Wolf in South Philadelphia. In 2004 they were moved to the lot in back of the Cuneo Press site on East Erie Avenue, lined up facing the Northeast Corridor where they have been spotted by countless commuters in the decade or so since. During that period the cars have steadily deteriorated; they appear to be in virtually derelict condition at this point. Whether they'll find a taker seems doubtful but remains to be seen. For the time being all cars have been noted as being "for sale."

Reading Blueliners

There are quite a few - thirteen, to be precise - of the old Reading MU cars on the PNAERC list that are, or were, owned by the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society. Most of these I didn't have out-of-service dates or RCT&HS acquisition dates for, but I've uncovered some cryptic references online to 1993 as the year that SEPTA sold these cars off. So I've added that year (noted with a question mark as uncertain) to the ownership histories of these cars.

But I could still use some more information. A few of the Reading cars that weren't rebuilt into 9000-series "Blueliners" are preserved, including one (car 863) owned by the RCT&HS, and I have no idea when that car was acquired by the Society. There are also some cars that were formerly owned by Rail Tours in Jim Thorpe and sold to other railroads, including the Lehigh Gorge Scenic and the California Western, for which I'm missing dates of sale.

Western Railway Museum updates

A visit to the Western Railway Museum this past weekend allowed me to update the status of a number of cars there. I wasn't able to tour the entire museum but I did get a quick tour through the new (well, within the last decade) barn. Construction of this building has allowed a number of cars previously in dead storage to be placed on public display.

Sacramento Northern 62 is now under restoration in the museum's shop. It is having running gear work done and being repainted in authentic white-and-blue colors among other things.

Key System 271, the museum's first car, is also undergoing restoration. It is having its platforms rebuilt.

Salt Lake Garfield & Western 306, an open trailer from the Saltair route, is now on public display rather than in storage.

Pacific Electric 457 is also now on public display.

Richmond Shipyard Railway 563 has been cosmetically restored and is on public display alongside sister car 561.

Interurban Electric Railway 602 has been put on trucks and placed on public display.

Kennecott Copper 700, formerly stored outside in an out-of-the-way location, is now on public display in the new barn.

Kennecott Copper 771 was formerly listed as "stored operable" but has been changed to "inoperable" due to some vandalism that has damaged the unit's control equipment.

Sacramento Northern 1019 has been placed on public display.

Portland Traction 4001 has been changed to "operated often" as its restoration has been completed and the car has been put into regular service.

Notes from Mexico

Google Street View is a wonderful thing. It has helped me considerably in figuring out the locations of certain pieces of equipment, particularly cars and locomotives that are plinthed in public locations. Today I was thinking about Mexico and, going through my list of preserved electric equipment in that country, realized that there were a couple of significant questions. The first involved one of the four preserved Mexicano mainline boxcab locomotives, 1012. Fortunately this one I was able to figure out with the help of Google Street View and this web page.

Formerly I'd had 1012 listed as being in Veracruz, but it turns out it wasn't in the city of Veracruz at all, it was further away elsewhere in Veracruz province (ah, the language barrier). It's plinthed in a town called Ciudad Mendoza, right at the spot where the new and old railroad alignments heading towards Mexico City diverge. And lo and behold, it's plainly visible on Street View in all of its vandalized glory. So 1012's record has been corrected and Ciudad Mendoza added to the list of owners of preserved electric equipment.

And while I was at it, I located another locomotive from this same series plinthed in Orizaba, the next city up the line from Mendoza. Mexicano 1002 is plinthed along the main drag there and if you play with Street View a little you can actually read the plaque next to the locomotive, which states that it was put in that location in 1975. More information for the roster!

So that leaves only one big question mark in Mexico: Veracruz streetcar 15, a single-truck open car similar to the others from that system preserved hither and yon, which is supposed to be plinthed in a place called Villahermosa in Veracruz province. Trouble is, I can't find any record whatsoever that it still exists. It's probably a candidate to be taken off of the roster but does anyone know for sure?

San Diego PCC update

I've updated a few records for PCC cars owned, and formerly owned, by San Diego Vintage Trolley. This has become a bit of a chore given changes in direction and renumberings but I think I've got it down:

Cars in service:
SDVT 529 - ex-SLPS 1716, ex-Muni 1122, acquired 2005, into service 2011
SDVT 530 - ex-TCRT 329, ex-PSCT/NJT 10, acquired 2012, into service 2014

Undergoing rebuild for service on SDVT:
SDVT 531 - ex-PTC/SEPTA 2186, acquired 2009, assigned number 532 until sometime around 2014

Not in service and stored on-site for potential future use on SDVT:
SDVT 533 - ex-PTC/SEPTA 2785, acquired 2010, has not been repainted or renumbered

Cars not in service and stored off-site in the east:
NJT 16 - ex-TCRT 335, acquired 2014
NJT 24 - ex-TCRT 363, acquired 2014

Being stripped for parts by SDVT:
Muni 1123 - ex-SLPS 1728, acquired 2005, assigned number 530 until sometime around 2014, being used as a parts source for SDVT 531

Sold by SDVT to San Diego Electric Railway Association in 2013:
"SDER 539" - ex-SLPS 1777, ex-Muni 1170, acquired by SDVT 2006, assigned number 531 until 2013, at that time was cosmetically restored (in SDER colors) for SDERA and numbered 539

I suppose the initial fleet was going to consist of cars numbered 529-532 (ex-1122, 1123, 1170, and 2186) with 533 (ex-2785) added on about 2010; then in the early 2010s, when ex-Newark cars became available, this changed. Car 529 was finished, 530 made into a parts source and an ex-Newark car assigned number 530, 531 sold, and 532 moved up in the queue and assigned number 531. Car 2785, originally assigned 533, may not receive that number but is apparently in storage intact. I should note that the car sold in 2013 to SDERA has been altered in the roster and listed as Muni 1170 but with a notation that it is lettered SDER 539, a "fictitious" designation as it never wore that number or that livery in service.

A selection of Cleveland streetcars

Looking into Cleveland Railway 0140, the single-trucker preserved at the Henry Ford Museum, got me thinking about preserved streetcars from Cleveland. There aren't very many streetcars from Cleveland still around, but the ones that are still around actually offer a reasonable cross-section of the city's electric railway history. Unlike, say, Los Angeles or Chicago, though, where the majority of the city's preserved streetcars are in one place, the extant Cleveland cars are scattered across the continent.

The oldest is car 0140, a Brill product fairly typical of 1890s single-truckers. It's preserved in Michigan, only a few hours from its home. The second oldest is a rather significant car: Municipal Traction 3334, later Cleveland Railway 934 and eventually Nelson Electric Tramway 23. Its design isn't particularly significant, as it's basically a catalog model Brill semi-convertible (albeit built by Stephenson, by then a Brill subsidiary, and modified several times during its life). But it was built for Municipal Traction, the "three cent line" championed by Cleveland mayor Tom Johnson in his populist fight against Cleveland Railway. An extensive account of this fight can be found here. Municipal Traction used a car numbered 3333 for promotional purposes to highlight its three cent fare and this car was numbered just one higher. Eventually it found its way out to western Canada, where it ran in Nelson and eventually became a grounded body. The Nelson Electric Tramway Society has restored it to operation on their riverfront streetcar line.

The result of Mayor Johnson's campaign for enforced low fares in Cleveland was that the street railway sought to lower its costs on a per-rider basis. This meant bigger cars and motor-trailer trains to reduce manpower requirements. Thus the next-oldest Cleveland cars are the big center-door cars built by Kuhlman in 1914, of which the best example is likely car 1227, restored to original condition by the Seashore Trolley Museum at great expense. It is likely to eventually be paired with matching trailer 2365 from 1917, currently intact but awaiting restoration work. These cars are large for streetcars, about 50' long each, and seat about 60 people (compared with a seating capacity of just 44 for the standard Chicago car around 1910, the "Old Pullman"). Thus in Cleveland in 1920 you could transport 120 seated passengers with a crew of three, whereas in Chicago you'd need twice as many employees and three streetcars to move that many seats.

The next step in Cleveland streetcar progression was the Peter Witt. None of the city's earliest 1915-built examples survive, nor do the later 1920s Kuhlman cars that ran well into the 1950s. But two examples survive that were actually diverted to Cleveland in 1918 from an order placed by the streetcar company in Rochester, New York. Cleveland Railway 1079 ran in Cleveland for only five years until it was sold for use in London, Ontario in 1923; later it went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where it was retired in 1951 and is preserved (apparently in complete condition, though I've never seen a photo of this car taken in recent decades) at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society.

It's unfortunate that none of the more modern city cars that ran in Cleveland were preserved, particularly the newer Peter Witts and the famous articulated cars, until the PCC era is reached, by which time Cleveland Railway had become Cleveland Transit System. One PCC car built for CTS by Pullman in 1946, car 4223, is being fully restored by the Illinois Railway Museum. The most interesting aspect of this car's design is arguably that it's thought likely that it belongs to a series of cars originally ordered for Baltimore, but cancelled following takeover of that city's streetcar lines by Baltimore Transit. Certain obscure design features in the 1946 Cleveland cars suggest specifications issued by Baltimore, but documentation on this is tough to come by. Regardless, the PCC cars were the last city cars built for Cleveland and end the story begun by cars like 0140 in Dearborn.

Cleveland streetcar history

I stumbled across a blog post here from back in 2014 that was published by the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan concerning some upkeep work that was done on their historic Cleveland single-trucker, Cleveland Railway 0140. Of the three pieces of equipment owned by the Ford museum that are on the list, this is the eldest and most significant - but it appears that my ownership history had been lacking. I had formerly listed the car as having belonged to Cleveland Electric Railway from construction until 1910, but the Ford Museum's page suggested that the car was built for the Woodland Avenue & West Side Street Railroad. The what? This sounds like a job for Google!

So it appears that the WA&WSSRR existed until 1893, meaning that this car would have indeed been built for them. Then that line became part of Cleveland City Railway, and according to this site CCR was folded into Cleveland Electric in 1903. So that's where the car's ownership history stands now: six different owners and one renumbering across 125 years. Stuff like this is always interesting to me but it's also a good reminder that the information in the PNAERC list is only as good as its sources.

A new identity for an old interurban car

The Rockhill Trolley Museum's major restoration project at the moment is Chicago Aurora & Elgin 315, its 1909 Kuhlman-built heavy interurban car. This car has been the subject of an on-again, off-again backdating and rebuilding for the past decade or so but lately the project has been very much on-again.

Work on car 315 hasn't just been limited to repairs; the car is being partially backdated to its as-built appearance in 1909. This includes removal of some modernization features like clerestory ventilators as well as reinstalling the arched stained-glass upper sash windows that the CA&E referred to as "streamer sash." Those were removed during the 1940s in a rebuilding but they're being put back in by RTM.

This past week the car received a first coat of Pullman green on much of its exterior. And with that, it ceases to be Chicago Aurora & Elgin 315 and instead becomes Aurora Elgin & Chicago 315. The AE&C was what that line was known as until a corporate reorganization in 1922. Car 315 is one of only two surviving CA&E cars to be painted in the colors of the original company and the only one of those two to have seen this level of authentic backdating. (One other CA&E car has been backdated and regained its upper-sash windows, car 320 in Iowa, but its target date is the mid-1920s after the corporate reorganization.)

As an aside, of the 11 ex-AE&C wood passenger cars preserved, there is an astonishing variety of liveries represented: two cars in the original Pullman green, one in 1920s dark red, two in 1930s maroon, four in 1940s blue, and two in 1950s crimson. Quite the circus fleet!

Mysterious origins: Interprovincial Railway 8

Here's a car that isn't that mysterious at first glance, but I just can't figure out its ownership history. Interprovincial Railway 8 is a single-truck open car that is fully restored and in regular use at the Canadian Railway Museum in Delson-St Constant, Quebec. The trouble is, I can't make head nor tails of its origins.

According to my records - and thus the PNAERC roster - the car was built in 1895 by Patterson & Corbin for the Peterborough & Ashburnham Street Railway (number unknown). Then in 1918 it was sold to the Toronto Suburban Railway as their 18, then sometime later - possibly the 1920s - it was sold to the Interprovincial as their 8. Eventually it ended up as a trailer with Gillies Brothers in Braeside until in 1957 it was acquired by the Canadian Railway Museum.

Unfortunately there are a lot of holes in this history and I'm not very certain about any of it. It was very hard to find any information online about the P&A and even harder to find information on the Interprovincial. The P&A only operated cars until 1898, when it lost its franchise and shut down; streetcars in Peterborough started running again in 1902 under a different company. So this car wasn't owned by the P&A until 1918 but I don't know whether it was in Peterborough that late or went elsewhere earlier than I had thought. I also don't know when it was retired or what its condition was when it came to CRM. To further complicate things, CRM's website has changed in recent years to list the car as a TSR car rather than an Interprovincial car. Information on car 8 is badly needed to be sure! Something tells me that the origins of this car may not actually be that mysterious - they're only mysterious to me because I haven't personally tracked down this car's history. Ah, the raison d'être of the PNAERC site, as our friends in Delson might say.

EDIT: This mystery is solved! See here for information on this car's history.

ConnCo car work at Branford

The Shore Line Trolley Museum has a somewhat active Facebook page devoted to its shop activities and I noticed that they just recently posted some photos of Connecticut Company 1199 out in the sunlight - for the first time in quite a few years, if I understand correctly. This car is rather historic because it's the newest known Stephenson product in existence, dating to 1907. Intriguingly, Branford most likely also has the oldest Stephenson product in existence, a truly ancient horsecar dating to sometime around 1857 which is also thought to be the oldest preserved street railway vehicle in the world.

For some time 1199 has been stored on the west track of Branford's "Blossom Barn" along with ConnCo open car 614 and Brooklyn "Peter Witt" 8111 with rail access difficult at best. But it appears that it was pulled outside for some cleanup. From the photos it appears to be the recipient of some recent stabilization work; perhaps this is George Papuga's latest restoration project?

Charles City Western steeplecab restoration completed

More "old news" in this case is the fact that Charles City Western 300 at the Illinois Railway Museum has had restoration work completed and its status on the PNAERC roster has been changed from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally."

Substantial restoration work was actually completed towards the end of 2016 but the locomotive's first appearance in public service at IRM will likely be this coming weekend for Members Day. This is a unique piece of equipment, as it is the only existing locomotive built by McGuire-Cummings. That firm built a number of similar steeplecabs for a variety of interurban lines, many of them in Iowa (for some reason McG-C was popular among Iowa lines), but most examples succumbed relatively early.

This locomotive was originally acquired by IRM in 1972 as a parts source but its historic significant was recognized fairly quickly and it was retained, in dead storage for many years and then as the subject of a restoration effort that lasted some 15 years. It was designed for operation on either 600v or 1200v DC with the air compressor running off 1200v while the motors and control ran off of 600v via a dynamotor. The restoration has replaced the original CP-30 air compressor with a 600v example of the same type and has simply wired around the dynamotor to feed the various 600v systems, leaving the dynamotor itself in place as a relic.

Two Boston PCC cars cut up

It hasn't been an auspicious summer for Boston PCC cars. Following the scrapping of the ex-Dallas double-ender a few months ago, the Seashore Trolley Museum this past weekend cut up two more Boston cars. These were 3099 and 3122, both "standard" Boston cars built in 1945 by Pullman-Standard.

The photos above were taken in 2007. These cars were not accessioned parts of the Seashore collection; in other words they hadn't been acquired for the purpose of ultimate preservation, but rather had been purchased as parts sources and had been utilized mainly as storage lockers for spare components. In 2015 or 2016 they had been moved due to yard construction but at that time it was discovered that both cars were experiencing serious frame failures, so the parts were unloaded from the cars and they were designated for disposition.

This is not a great historic loss. Seashore has another car from this exact order, 3127, preserved as part of its historic collection and that car has been repainted to its earlier orange-and-cream service livery. Another car from the order, 3100, is preserved at the Connecticut Trolley Museum and has been the subject of on-again, off-again restoration work. And of course there are many Boston PCC cars of substantially similar design preserved at various museums and on the MBTA itself on the Mattapan line.

Mystery streetcars in Seattle

It's time for more mystery streetcars! Today I'm turning my attention to a pair of streetcars preserved at the Ballard Terminal Railway in Seattle. The Ballard Terminal, whose owner I believe also owns these two cars, has a very short "yard" just off of West 45th Street in Seattle which consists of a single curving siding. At the end of the siding sits an Oporto single-trucker, but I'm not particularly interested in that car because it doesn't qualify for inclusion in the PNAERC list. However on the ground along the fence are two car bodies that probably do qualify: a Birney and a double-truck turtleback roof car of (presumably) Stone & Webster design. They're visible on Google aerial photos and the roof of the double-trucker can be seen on Google Street View.

So... anyone know what these cars are? I know that Seattle Municipal Railway had both turtleback-roof cars and Birneys, as did - I believe - Tacoma Railway & Power. Both of those lines can boast of only a single Birney body currently on the PNAERC list so assuming the two Ballard cars are local they are fairly significant.

Dallas/Boston PCC scrapped

I can't recall offhand the last time that a car on the PNAERC list went directly from "undergoing restoration" to "scrapped" but I suppose there's a first time for everything. It was brought to my attention that this summer the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority in Dallas scrapped the ex-Dallas double-ended PCC car that had arrived there only a year and a half earlier.

The car was built by Pullman-Standard as Dallas Railway & Terminal 612, becoming Boston MTA (and later MBTA) 3334 in 1959 when it was sold for use in Massachusetts. In 1991 it was acquired by Trolleyville and moved to Cleveland, where it was stored indoors for most of the time until the Trolleyville collection was liquidated in 2009. At that time it was acquired by MATA but, lacking storage space, it was moved to the Illinois Railway Museum and stored there. It was moved to Dallas in December 2015.

As recently as early 2017 the car was undergoing a major rebuilding with the goal of making it operational; it had been stripped down to the steel shell and the entire car had been sand-blasted. But it seems that the frame was more heavily deteriorated than expected and McKinney decided that it would be uneconomical to repair the car for operation. So in May or June it was cut up. It's worth remembering that MATA is not a museum; they're basically a tourist railroad with a franchise to provide a public transportation service. So their primary mission isn't to preserve or restore Dallas streetcars, it's to provide reliable service along their street railway route.

Car 612 was far from unique. A dozen other other members of this class exist in various museums, though none in operating condition and only a couple retained as accessioned collection pieces. But all of the other examples are located in the northeast - none in their original home in Texas.

Black Hills Central update

As I did some web surfing looking for more information on Utah interurban cars, I came across an update on Bamberger 403. This classic Jewett wooden interurban car was built in 1910 as a motorized combine but was later rebuilt by Bamberger as a coach trailer. It strongly resembles (well, resembled) cars built for the North Shore Line in Chicago, of which none survived.

But it doesn't resemble them much any more. It was stored in steadily deteriorating condition at the Heber Valley Railroad in Utah until 2012, when it was sold to the Black Hills Central and moved to South Dakota. It appears, from an ATRRM blog post, that the BHC rebuilt it last year for use as a locomotive-hauled coach. It fits in well with the other ex-interurban cars in their regular train, the others being from the Oregon Electric, but it's too bad that the car has lost much of its classic appearance to a somewhat clumsy, if admittedly pragmatic, rebuilding. That said, the car wasn't exactly complete and original when it went to South Dakota, and at BHC it should be well maintained.