The Last Boston Birney

There's only one Birney in existence that was built for Boston and it's a long way from home. Companhia Forca e Luz do Parana 110, built by Brill in 1920 for the Boston Elevated Railway (original number unknown), was sold to Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1931 and ran there until 1952 on that city's meter-gauge system. At some point, I believe in the 1990s, the car body was discovered and restored using a separately-discovered (correct type) truck. For a time the car was on display in the Praça Tiradente in downtown Curitiba.

But while I was looking around online for something else I stumbled across this article showing that the car is no longer downtown, nor is it on display. Back in 2002 it was removed and transported to a city storage yard, which I tracked down to this location. The car still seems to be in pretty good shape; it's under a roof and while the paint is failing it appears largely intact. There's even a video here that shows the car's interior to be mainly complete (though I haven't a clue where those controllers came from). The truck needs some work though. But anyway, the car's status has been updated to "stored."

Finding up-to-date information on preserved electric cars in other countries can be tough, particularly where there's a language barrier and/or where there isn't much of a focus on the car (an example of this is the ex-Worcester Street Railway car preserved at a police station in Brazil). But if it's a car that was built for service in North America then it still qualifies for the PNAERC list and I'm still interested in trying to track it.