New Year, New Look

As we end 2023 and begin 2024, I want to extend a huge THANK YOU to our webmaster, Jeff Hakner, for uploading some 4,000 new image and video links to the PNAERC database! Previously, we hadn't updated any photos to the database since 2014, so any cars added since then lacked photos. And even for equipment that was already listed at that point, a lot of the previews (thumbnails) didn't work right, so the standard "list view" as shown above only included thumbnail images for maybe 60-70% of cars.

Now, that number is about 95%, and nearly all of the bad photo and video links should be fixed. Tracking down pictures for all this equipment has taken me six months and about 170 or 180 hours, but it is a big improvement. Thanks, too, to everyone who has sent in updated photos over the years! Keep them coming - the next time we do a photo update like this, we'll be grateful for any recent shots.

Now's Your Chance

...to own a wooden interurban car of your very own! The car shown above is Northern Texas Traction 407, a parlor trailer built in 1919 by St. Louis Car Company (very late for a wood car). It was a house in Texas for many years after retirement in 1934, but in 2006 it was acquired by the Edwards Rail Car Company for potential conversion into a doodlebug (like this one, which was rebuilt by Edwards from Southern Traction 316). Unfortunately, Edwards went out of business in 2008, and the car has apparently been sitting in the old Edwards building in Montgomery, Alabama, ever since.

The car is now being auctioned off as part of the Royce G. Kershaw Jr. Estate (the source of the above photo) so get ready to place your bids! Car 407 looks fairly solid, but is also obviously stripped down to the shell after its years as a house. The estate includes a 2-6-0 Mogul, an impressive-looking wooden railroad coach, and at least two Edwards doodlebugs*, so car 407 may not exactly be the highlight. It's also not unique: of the five cars built in this series, three are still around. These include car 409, on indoor display near Rochester, New York, and car 411, subject of a beautiful cosmetic restoration and recently placed on display under a shelter in Burleson, Texas.

*EDIT: Olin Anderson points out that one of the doodlebugs is a heavily rebuilt Philadelphia & Western "Strafford car" which is not on the PNAERC list due to how modified it is.

Scratch One Highliner

It appears that ex-Illinois Central "Highliner" double-decker commuter car 1538 has been scrapped at the Boone & Scenic Valley. Sources have sent me conflicting information on whether it was already gone, but the photo posted above (from this thread on RyPN) claims to show the car in the early stages of being cut up. Given that the photo is a few months old, I assume the car is now scrapped. I've removed it from the PNAERC roster.

Boone has five "Highliners" left, but at least one or two of them are thought to be headed to scrap soon as well. The B&SV acquired six of the cars back in 2007, when the first batch were retired, suggesting these were the rougher cars in the overall fleet at the time. This is no huge loss: there are 14 of the giant cars preserved elsewhere, including four at the Illinois Railway Museum and 10 at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas.

South Shore Combine Scrapped

Sources have reported that South Shore combine 102, pictured above back in 2008, has been cut up at the Boone & Scenic Valley. The car had been derelict for years, and looks like it had been a source of spare parts. It was part of the line's first order for combines, from Pullman in 1926, and had been at Boone since retirement in 1984. Boone's PNAERC roster now stands at 20 cars.

South Shore combines have fared pretty poorly in preservation. All were lengthened and air-conditioned, but if anything the A/C has made them a greater challenge for museums to put - or keep - in service. Car 102 is the fifth to be scrapped in the preservation era, leaving only four - two of them "tunneled" hulks in Chesterton, Indiana - still around. Of the remaining two, car 106 is also at Boone and is the only South Shore combine currently in operational condition. Car 107 is at East Troy, which is unusual in that they have two South Shore cars fitted with A/C (albeit coaches, not combines) in regular use as a heavily rebuilt "dinner train."

In Memoriam - Wendell Dillinger

Wendell Dillinger, a major figure in traction preservation for over 60 years, died on Sunday the 10th at the age of 93. He was the owner of the Middletown & Hummelstown, a short line and tourist railroad based in Middletown, Pennsylvania, which he purchased in 1976.

In the years before that, he was active in the traction preservation scene in the Chicago area. I met him just once, in 2003, and I recall him describing how he was one of the principals behind the consortium museum lawsuit against the Chicago Aurora & Elgin around 1962. To make a long story short, the railroad had sold 15 or 20 cars to various trolley museums, but then later decided to sell the entire fleet - including those 15 or 20 cars - to the scrapper. Wendell helped organize the joint museum effort to file a lawsuit against the CA&E which was (obviously) successful and resulted in a cross-section of cars from the line being preserved instead of every last car being cut up. For the railroad's part, they had to purchase the museum cars back from the scrapper - of course at two or three times what the scrapper had paid for them!

Anyway, during the 1960s, Wendell worked for the C&NW and then the Iowa Terminal. Meanwhile, he started amassing a small collection of electric railway equipment, including two Rio de Janeiro open cars that were stored at the then-Railway Equipment Leasing & Investment Corporation site (today the Fox River Trolley Museum) and an ex-Kansas City steeplecab that went to Iowa Terminal but never ran there. In the late 1970s or early 1980s, after he purchased the M&H, he moved all of his equipment to Middletown and began collecting more, including a smattering of cars from Red Arrow, SEPTA's city lines, the Lackawanna, and some car bodies thrown in too. Today, the M&H has 24 cars on the PNAERC roster. Wendell also oversaw operation of the M&H tourist railroad business and the restoration of a Canadian 2-6-0 steam locomotive. About ten years ago, he had a carbarn built in Middletown and was finally able to put the more significant pieces from the traction collection into protected storage.

Wendell Dillinger left an indelible mark on traction preservation. Our condolences go out to his family and friends.

The Beginning of the End for the Trolley Graveyard

And so it begins: the scrapping has started in Windber, following the sale of the property and at least two or three parts-gathering expeditions by various trolley museums. Sources have confirmed that seven of the eight Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCCs have been scrapped, in part because they were blocking access to the barn, which contains a railroad business car that has been sold to the Everett Railroad. At last check, the only Shaker Heights PCC on the property (albeit sans trucks) was car 73. The other seven - ex-Twin City cars 56 and 58 and "native" Shaker Pullman cars 77, 87, 89, 91, and 93 - have all been cut up. They've been removed from the PNAERC list along with Toronto PCC 4524, which was never located on-site in Windber. At one point it was stored in a small town in Ontario, but I've lost track of it over the years and I strongly suspect it has been scrapped.

Of course, this is just the beginning - there are another 50 (yes, fifty!) cars in Windber, and rumors suggest that only a handful are likely to find new homes. Stay tuned for more news.

As a final stick in the eye to any Shaker Heights PCC fans out there, word has reached me that a Shaker Heights car in totally unrelated circumstances has also been scrapped. Shaker car 47, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1773, was cut up in Jasper, Arkansas, about a year ago following the death of the car's owner in 2020. This car had gone to Arkansas in 1987 as part of a trade deal that saw DC Transit 1540 - formerly located in Jasper - go to the National Capital Trolley Museum in Maryland.

Remarkably enough, Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCCs - long thought of as one of the more over-collected types - are quickly becoming an endangered species. Following the scrapping of the eight cars listed here, there are only 10 SHRT PCC cars left (plus a handful of ex-Toronto 4600-series cars acquired by GCRTA in the late 1970s). And I'd guess that within a few years, those 10 cars may be whittled down to five or six.

Here's a final photo gallery of the cars recently cut up. Who needs ipecac?

Car 56 in 2017

Car 58 in 2018

Car 77 in 2018

Car 87 in 2010

Car 89 in 2014

Car 91 in 2014

Car 93 in 2014

Car 47 in Arkansas in 2018

As a point of trivia, before the nine cars listed above were removed today, the PNAERC list stood at a total of 2,107 cars. I suspect it will never again reach that figure.

Calling All Photographers!

UPDATE: The updated photos have been sent to our webmaster for addition to the PNAERC site, but we're always interested in recent photos of poorly covered cars, especially the ones listed here. An email at any time with photos or updates of any of this equipment is appreciated!

I need your help! As you may be aware, we were never able to get the photo upload feature on the PNAERC website working, which means I can update the written data anytime I like but I'm unable to change, add, or remove any of the photos or videos. D'oh! But never fear - our indefatigable webmaster, Jeff Hakner, says he can upload an entire new collection of photos all at once and update everything in one fell swoop.

As such, I've been going through the entire list and trying to find recent - or recent-ish - photos of every piece of equipment, all 2,100 or so of them. This has taken quite a long time but I'm about 90% of the way there. There are, however, missing pieces - cars for which I can't find any photos at all, not even reasonably outdated ones.

That's where you come in! If you have any photos of any of the pieces of equipment listed below, and would be willing to have your photos published online to help fill out the PNAERC list (credit or not as you prefer), I'd be very grateful for any submissions. Photos should be somewhat recent (I'd prefer sometime within the last 20 years, but the main thing is that the car should look roughly the same in the photo as it does now) but do not have to be excellent quality. A dimly lit, oddly angled, or partially obscured photo is better than none. Thank you!

Edit: Many thanks to Cambridge Lutece and Wesley Paulson for sending in photos!

Alberta Prairie Railway Excursions - DL&W 4602, DL&W 4627

Boone & Scenic Valley - Metra 1538, Metra 1551

Brooks Preservation Society - DL&W 3236

Canada Science & Technology Museum - Toronto Ry 64, BCER 1235

Canadian Railway Museum - QRL&P 105, TTC TP10, MT 1801, MT 1953

Connecticut Trolley Museum - York Utilities 72

Denver Rail Heritage Society - DT 83

Edmonton Radial Railway Society - ERR 31, SMR 35, ERR 38, ERR 53, SMR 54, Calgary 60, Sask 62, ERR 65, ERR 73, LSR 202, TTC 4349

Electric Railway Historical Association, Perris, CA - LARy 34, LARy 44, SDER 201

Fort Smith Trolley Museum - FSL&T 10, CT 305, CT 310

Gomaco - basically every PCC in storage in Ida Grove, Iowa

Halton County Radial Railway - TTC 4053

La Crosse County Historical Society - MVPS 12

Middletown & Hummelstown - CTA S372, DL&W 4307

Mariazeller Museumstramway, Austria - TARS 640

McKinney Avenue Transit Authority - DR&T 183, DR&T 189, DR&T 323

Museum of the American Railroad - Metra 1548, 1585, 1608, 1652, 1661

Museum of Mobile - Mobile unk#

National Museum of Transportation - UR 165, SLPS 850

Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society - Fresno 74

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum - DL&W 3583 (aka SD&A 251)

Penn Ohio Electric Railway - PAT 1639, PAT 1728

Reading Blue Mountain & Northern - DL&W 2310 (aka RBM&N 314), DL&W 2313 (aka RBM&N 313), DL&W 2316 (aka RBM&N 312), DL&W 2341 (aka RBM&N 311)

San Diego Electric Railway Association - SDER 128

San Francisco Municipal Railway - SFMR 1115, SFMR 1130

Seashore Trolley Museum - NYSR 113, WF&O 60, MBTA 3338, MBTA 3344

South Shore Line Museum Project - CSS&SB 351

Southern California Railway Museum - LARy 807, LARy 836, LARy 1003, LARy 9007

Symco Union Thresheree, Wisconsin - CSL 1278

Travel Town - LARY 59

United Railroad Historical Society - PRR 413, PRR 453, DLW 2406, DLW 3541

Western Railway Museum - Stockton 52, Key 186, PG&E 41, IER 358, Peninsular 61

Note 1: I left private owners off this list; I also left off the collection in Windber, since it's going away soon anyway!

Note 2: It is distinctly possible that some of the cars listed here have been scrapped. If you have any information regarding cars listed here that no longer exist, please drop me a line!

Texas Transportation 1 Returns Home

Thanks to Olin Anderson, who alerted me to this post from the Facebook page of the San Antonio Railroad Heritage Museum in Elmendorf, Texas, from back in September. Elmendorf is where Texas Transportation 1, the ex-Pearl Brewery Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotive, has been stored for a number of years. Recently, SARHM repainted the locomotive in its cheery TT yellow livery. Per this post, in September it was moved back to home territory in the Pearl Brewery area of San Antonio. It appears that the locomotive may have been deposited in (I'm hoping "in" and not "behind" because it looks like it doesn't have its doors or windows installed) the ex-Samuels Glass Company building at Newell and Karnes Streets. Recent Street View images suggest this building is undergoing a major renovation, so I can only presume that locomotive 1 is part of the plan, joining fellow TT locomotive 2, which is attractively displayed under a roof about 750' to the northeast. Locomotive 1's location has been updated to return it from Elmendorf to San Antonio, but for the moment it's still "stored" and not "displayed."

Which brings up a question: anyone know who owns the two TT locomotives? My best guess is that it's whatever company owns the land that Pearl Brewery once sat on, but I'm not sure what to call the company. For the moment, both are listed as still being under Texas Transportation ownership, though that seems a bit disingenuous given that rail operations ended over 20 years ago.

Box Motor for Sale

Thanks to Jeron Glander for alerting me to the fact that Texas Electric 507, a freight motor built by St. Louis Car Company in 1907 for Texas Traction, has been listed for sale on Ozark Mountain Railcar. This car is (at least, to my knowledge, still) owned by the City of Waxahachie, which acquired it in 2018 as outlined here. The web page about the plans for car 507 is still visible here, but it appears that priorities have changed. The asking price for the car is $30,000, which doesn't sound very serious, but I can only assume it's negotiable. The car itself is obviously just a body, but appears more solid than a lot of bodies, presumably because it was mostly inside of a barn for many years.

Car 507 is one of just two TE box motors preserved, and may be the better of the two in terms of condition. It would be a shame to see it cut up - another TE box motor was just recently scrapped - but box motors are a tough sell to railway museums.