The second sweeper

Thanks to Bill Wall, who pointed out this post from the SubChat message board. It appears - improbably - that this week two snow sweepers left the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. Following the relocation of C127 to Scranton, the other sweeper that was being stored by BSM for someone else left Baltimore too. This second sweeper was New Jersey Transit 5246, a handsome double-truck Russell-built example built in 1921.

Car 5246 has quite a history: it was built new for the Trenton & Mercer County, making it the only survivor from that line* and a very rare survivor from the network of small New Jersey suburban lines. In 1934, following the abandonment of streetcars in Trenton, the sweeper went to the Third Avenue Railway System in New York. It only ran there 14 years before being resold again to Toronto, which operated it until 1973. At that time it was brought back to its home state of New Jersey by New Jersey Transit, the purpose being to replace NJT 5173 as the Newark Subway's snow sweeper after that car burned to its frame in 1972. (The frame of 5173, though, is still intact and the car - such as it is - is considered to be on the roster of the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, or NJERHS.) Sweeper 5246 was stored - and occasionally used, I guess - on the Newark Subway system until it was transferred to the Friends of New Jersey Transportation Heritage Center (FNJTHC) in 2011. Without anywhere to put it, that group sent it to Baltimore for storage.

Car 5246 is still evidently owned by FNJTHC and supposedly the original plan was to move it from Baltimore to the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway, where other cars owned by them and NJERHS are stored. But there was said to be no room in the inn, so 5246 has now ended up back home on the Newark system for interim storage. It's now one of two cars listed under NJ Transit, joining a lone PCC that was kept as an historic relic but has not, as far as I know, seen use. And BSM, for its part, now no longer has anyone else's equipment on its property.

*Sweeper 5246 is the only car listed on the PNAERC list as ex-Trenton & Mercer County, however I'm not certain that's strictly correct. The only information I can find on T&MC's corporate history is here and it implies that T&MC was basically an operating company, with equipment owned by various subsidiaries. If that's true then Trenton Street Railway 288 would also be ex-T&MC... but to be consistent I'd likely need to change the ownership history of either 288 or 5246. Anyone know the story?