Hershey Transit Car Dismantled

I believe this "news" is a year or two out of date, but a report came across my Internet browser that Hershey Transit 3 has been dismantled. I have, accordingly, taken it off the PNAERC list.

One of two Hershey Transit cars known (until now) to exist, car 3 was built as a semiconvertible combine by Brill in 1903 for the Hummeltown & Campbellstown Street Railway. It later went to Hershey, at some point got rebuilt as a line car (in-service photo here), and was retired in 1948. It has actually been in preservation for a long time: its body was acquired way back in 1965 by Trolley Valhalla, and later made its way to Buckingham Valley Trolley Association and Electric City Trolley Museum before the car went home to Hershey in 2006. The photo above shows it being moved into the old car barn in Hershey, where the local historical society was storing it (and is currently embarked on a major restoration of Hershey Transit 7, an all-steel suburban car).

Car 3's condition was extremely poor, so it was dismantled. Major components have been saved (thanks to Joel Salomon for the above photo of one of the car's ends), but if car 3 arises in the future, I would imagine it will be more of a replica than a restoration. The PNAERC list now stands at 2,086 cars total.

And in unrelated news, the Fox River Trolley Museum has acquired ex-Rio de Janeiro open car 1719 from the Middletown & Hummelstown. More information is here. This is a standard Rio double-trucker and actually spent about 20 years in South Elgin, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when it was owned by Wendell Dillinger and stored at the museum. This change doesn't affect the PNAERC list, but it's interesting nonetheless.