Savannah Birneys

There were a lot of cities in the south that had small street railway systems; many never ran anything bigger than a single-truck car. Most of these lines quit rather early so preserved cars from them are rare (though that's largely true of small-town systems in the north as well). One exception is Savannah, though to be sure it was a larger streetcar system than many.

Some 15 years ago I had the chance to visit the Savannah Roundhouse Museum, in the old Central of Georgia shops in that city, and at the time there were two Birney bodies from Savannah there. The first, which was in good condition, was car 636, built by American in 1923. A photo taken of car 636 in 2011, but looking largely the same as I remember it a few years earlier, is online here:

Savannah 636 is on the PNAERC list and has been for years. Then there was a second Birney body, this one in pretty wretched shape, sitting outside. No car number was evident. I did track down a photo of this car taken in 2008:

So that leads me to today, when I stumbled across a lengthy treatise here about street railway systems in Georgia. It's kind of interesting but what intrigued me in particular was that on page 111 there was a list of Georgia streetcars known to survive. And it included two Savannah Birneys at the roundhouse museum: cars 636 and (drum roll) 630. Could the cadaver pictured above be the 630?

Answer: well, maybe. But I don't think so. That's because it appears there's a third Savannah Birney in the mix at the roundhouse museum. Check out this photo, taken in 2011 just a few months after the shot of 636:

Could this be the 636? Possibly but it doesn't look like it. This body has a coat of tan paint (which doesn't look new enough for it to have been painted following that earlier photo), headlights, and roof ventilators. My best guess is that this car is the rumored Savannah 630 - and it's been added to the PNAERC roster accordingly.

Of course, I'd be interested in some confirmation from someone who knows for certain, not to mention I'd love some confirmation that it hasn't gone away in the intervening six or seven years. But as Birney bodies go it looks fairly complete and solid. Hopefully both of these cars are being preserved at the roundhouse. And for good measure I'd love to know whether the cadaver is still around; a photo here from early 2011 appears to show it on a shop truck inside the roundhouse with car 636 in the background:

Or is it possible this is a fourth Birney? Or the tan car thought to be 630 before a paint job? You be the judge. If you're looking for information on the streetcars at the roundhouse museum, keep in mind that there's also a Melbourne tram and a single-truck open trailer of some non-historic origin there just to make it interesting.