Electric locomotive leaves Noblesville

Bob Harris has confirmed that yesterday, the 26th, Cedar Rapids & Iowa City 55 left the former Indiana Transportation Museum site in Noblesville. It has been moved to the nearby Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company site where usable components will be salvaged for use on interurban cars owned by HHTC and also for use on Chicago Lake Shore & South Bend 73, which is not part of the HHTC collection. The locomotive's trucks are close to what was used by the Union Traction 427-series combines and will be placed under Union Traction 437.

CRANDIC 55 was built in 1926 by Detroit United and is one of only three extant pieces - all freight or non-revenue equipment - in existence from that system. It later went to the Eastern Michigan and then, in 1935 when it was only nine years old, to the CRANDIC in Iowa. It ran there for 18 years, until the wires came down in 1953, but it remained stored on the property until the mid-1960s when it was noticed and acquired by members of the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication, later ITM. It was moved to Noblesville but never ran and garnered little attention. In recent decades its condition has deteriorated badly to the point where it would be a major project just to make the locomotive presentable. Only three electric cars now remain in Forest Park: Indianapolis Railways 153, North Shore 172, and Lackawanna MU car 4328.