Penn Ohio PCCs

It was brought to my attention that a post made yesterday on Reddit, of all places, includes photos of the rarely seen Pittsburgh PCCs at Penn Ohio Electric Railway in Ashley, Ohio. That may be a misnomer at this point; the person who posted the photos says they recently purchased the property the cars sit on, and the two remaining PCCs just came with the purchase. There used to be a third PCC, Pittsburgh 1713, which was conveyed to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum last year. That leaves two: air-electric 1639 and 1949 sealed-window postwar car 1728.

These two cars have been listed as being "for sale" since 2017, but the post makes a couple of things pretty clear. First, when PTM acquired car 1713 last year, the owners of the three cars made these two available to the museum as parts sources. As such, at least some of the more valuable parts and components have been scavenged to help keep cars in the PTM fleet operating. Second, the current owners have no particular interest in these cars being moved somewhere else to rot away. Their current intention is to scrap both, and the PNAERC listings for both cars have been updated to reflect that.

This isn't a huge historical loss, as there are other examples of both 1600- and 1700-series Pittsburgh cars preserved, most notably at PTM. But there aren't as many as you might think. If you discount the cars remanufactured as 4000s and the six soon-to-be-cut-up 1700s in Windber, car 1728 is one of just seven 1700-series cars still in existence. Of the other six, two are at PTM, two are plinthed outdoors, one is in private hands and one is nicely stuffed and mounted at the Heinz Museum in Pittsburgh. It's unlikely any besides the two at PTM will ever run again. As for 1600s, car 1639 is one of four cars from that 1945 order still around; the other three include car 1644 at Northern Ohio Railway Museum, modernized car 1799 at PTM, and the heavily rebuilt car with the LRV front end at Buckeye Lake.