The Heritage Rail Alliance spring conference was this past weekend in Boone, Iowa, and it was reported back to me that there were fewer ex-Illinois Central "Highliner" cars there than the PNAERC list may have suggested. Some digging revealed that, sure enough, the Boone & Scenic Valley has disposed of three out of the five "Highliners" that were on the property in fall of 2023. Most likely, these cars were cut up later that year or in early 2024, though I'm not exactly sure.
Anyway, Metra cars 1511 (shown above), 1551, and 1628 (shown below) have now all been removed from the PNAERC list. This leaves a total of 15 electric cars at Boone, including cars
1506 and
1523. Like the three scrapped cars, these two were built by St. Louis Car Company in 1971 and retired from service in 2007.
There are now 16 "Highliners" still on the PNAERC list: the remaining two at Boone, four at IRM, and 10 at the Museum of the American Railroad in Texas. The entire list currently stands at 2,083 pieces.
EDIT: A few weeks after this post, I received updated information indicating that the two cars retained by B&SV were not 1506 and 1523, as I had supposed, but 1511 and 1628. Cars 1506 and 1523 have apparently been scrapped. The PNAERC list has been updated with this corrected information.
Do any of the Highliners at IRM operate under wire? I recall a voltage difference?
ReplyDeleteYes, the Highliners at IRM operate, or at least some do. There may be one of the quartet that hasn’t run at IRM. They’re designed for 1500V DC but with some minor modifications they run, albeit at slower speeds, on 600V DC. They most recently ran in 2023, when two participated in IRM’s “70 for 70” trolley pageant.
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