Miscellaneous updates

A few updates to the PNAERC list have come across my desk recently, so here's a general housekeeping update. First, Bob Harris has sent in a couple of photos showing recent progress on Chicago Lake Shore & South Bend 73:

These are brand new clerestory window frames to go with the nice copper roof that was recently documented. The amount and quality of craftsmanship going into this car is extremely impressive.

Second, a huge thank you to Bill West, who sent me an extensively-researched roster of every Pennsylvania Railroad MP-54 ever built. The sheer amount of data in the roster is staggering; many cars were renumbered one, two, three, or even four times during their lives and in most cases these renumberings are listed along with the year and month. This invaluable resource has allowed me to fill out the ownership history of all nine of the PRR MP-54 type cars included on the PNAERC list. I'm still not sure exactly when most of the cars were sold by SEPTA to their respective preservation-industry owners, but I finally have a full and accurate picture of their service lives. Thanks, Bill!

And finally, circling back around to car 73, I received news from Bill Wulfert that South Shore interurban car 205 has been scrapped. The 205 was the second-to-last surviving trailer from the South Shore - and the very last one is in peril. Car 205 was stored in steadily deteriorating condition at the Indiana Transportation Museum from its retirement in 1984 until 2018, when the eviction of the ITM collection from the park in Noblesville led to the car's sale to a private party and removal (shown above) to an off-site storage location. Car 205's generally poor condition did not make it a good candidate for restoration but it was thoroughly stripped for parts which will aid in the restoration of car 73 and possibly other preserved South Shore cars from the steel era.