Third car moved to Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company

Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company, which was formed earlier in 2018 for the purpose of acquiring for preservation several pieces of traction equipment from the Indiana Transportation Museum, moved its third car from the ITM site in Noblesville to its own property on Friday. This car is Union Traction 429, the "Noblesville," and it joins identical car 437 which was previously moved by HHTC.

Car 429 was arguably the jewel of the ITM traction collection, such as it was. The car was built by St. Louis in 1925 and ran into the 1930s under UTC and later Indiana Railroad. In 1968 it became the first piece of electric passenger equipment from Indiana acquired by ITM, which at the time was known as the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication: IMOTAC. Though always a body, ITM acquired the correct trucks and other electric equipment for the car and did a rather nice cosmetic restoration. It was the only piece of electric equipment to go into ITM's barn when it was built and to stay there until the present day. Overall it would have been a strong candidate for full operational restoration, had ITM's traction program not collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s. It is thought that HHTC intends a full, but non-operating, restoration.

There is one oddity about the 429: it's not certain that it's the 429. When the car body was acquired by IMOTAC it was very quickly sand-blasted, with all original traces of lettering erased, and painted as the "Noblesville" - the city that was home to the museum. Whether that's a fortuitous coincidence or a bit of historical revisionism is probably lost to history.

The ITM collection, as listed on the PNAERC roster, now stands at nine cars: four Lackawanna MU cars, two locomotives, two interurban cars, and a streetcar body.

EDIT: Through other sources HHTC has stated that they do intend an operational restoration of car 429, which is good to hear, and which also suggests they plan on building an electrified demonstration railway on which it can operate. Presumably plans for full restoration also apply to their other cars including UTC 437, THI&E 81, and Indianapolis Railways 153, the last of which is still in Forest Park in Noblesville.