How did I miss this one?

It's not too unusual for me to happen upon a random electric car body preserved by some local history group that has been in preservation for years, but unbeknownst to me (there are plenty of examples of this). But the latest example of this is a bit more prominent than most, or at least you'd think so.

Pacific Electric 4601 is one of that line's giant "Blimp" interurban cars and was built by ACF in 1911 for the Southern Pacific's electric lines in the Bay Area, later known as Interurban Electric Railway. Following the 1941 demise of IER, this car was among a batch of IER cars sent down to the LA area in 1942 for wartime service with the US Maritime Commission. In 1944 it was sold to the PE and renumbered 4601. Unfortunately it didn't keep its new identity for long: in October 1946 it was involved in a very bad head-on collision in Torrance that resulted in the death of the motorman. With one end hopelessly crushed in, the car was stripped and sold for scrap.

Little did I know until now, but it was bought by a Torrance resident who kept it around as described in this online article. In 1987 the car's body was donated to the city and placed in Wilson Park next to the site of the Southern California Live Steamers. It's still there today, sitting on Bettendorf trucks, with its wrecked end still lopped off, but painted in a coat of red paint and looking reasonably well maintained. You'd think I would have come across this earlier, but it took someone named James Whitney posting the above photo on Facebook to bring the car to my attention. It certainly qualifies for the list; there are other cars missing an end on the PNAERC roster, and with its trucks and paint job it's obviously meant to be an historic display. As prominent as its placement is, I just never came across references to it until now. Better late than never!

And while I was at it, I noticed that I had screwed up some of the ownership history on the various preserved ex-IER cars. That's now been fixed - the cars are listed as having been owned by the SP until 1934, when the East Bay electric lines were reorganized as IER, and then the cars that went south to the USMC in 1942 have had that owner added. With the corrections, PE 498 has now gone through a total of ten different owners or numbers, including three different USMC numbers and two PE numbers. I'm not sure if it's the record holder for ownership changes but it's certainly up there.