The Spirit of 1776

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has rolled out their second striking, one-off PCC livery in as many years, this time in honor of the semiquincentennial. As shown above, Port Authority Transit 1799, a 1945 air-electric car, has been painted in a livery seen on the streets of Pittsburgh around the bicentennial in 1976. It's a striking color scheme that built off the then-current "banded" color layout used by PAT. The car was debuted today to much (literal) fanfare.

Now, there is an asterisk with this one. Unlike the "Terrible Trolley," this isn't really an accurate livery for this particular car. PAT did field a car with this exact livery, but it was (unsurprisingly) their car 1776, which did not survive into preservation. Car 1799 is identical; built as car 1613, it was overhauled in 1979 and received the number 1799 at that time. The original "Spirit of 1776" car began life as car 1616 and was overhauled in 1974, which is when it received the number 1776 and this livery.

But I don't think anyone's complaining. Car 1799 was saved by PTM to prevent it from being scrapped, but was in poor mechanical shape and had been considered "deaccessioned" by the museum for years. This new livery is quite the renaissance. I assume that 1799/"Spirit of 1776" is now considered part of the collection; although the car is not operational, at least not for now, it's certainly a striking display piece. I've updated its status from "storage" to "display." Kudos to everyone at PTM who made this happen!

The Terrible Trolley Rides Again

Today in a dramatic ceremony the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum unveiled its latest restoration project: Port Authority Transit 1713, better known as the "Terrible Trolley." This car, a 1949-vintage PCC built for Pittsburgh Railways, was in 1980 painted in an elaborate livery honoring the Pittsburgh Steelers. The car was acquired by PTM two years ago and since then has undergone a speedy restoration to its 1980 appearance. The car is undoubtedly eye-catching, and as popular as the Steelers are in Pittsburgh, it's sure to raise awareness of the museum with a fan base that may not currently be very familiar with the museum.

As for car 1713, its condition has been updated to reflect that it is in operation at the museum. This means that of the eight 1700-series Pittsburgh cars on the PNAERC list, the only two that are restored and operating are both at PTM. (I should also mention that I recently removed several cars in this series from the list that were at Windber because they had clearly collapsed, making them effectively unsalvageable in my opinion and, therefore, no longer "preserved.") The photo above is from a Railpace post on Facebook.

And in unrelated news, Bill Wall sent along this link and alerted me to the fact that Branford has just celebrated the 125th birthday of its line! The line from Branford to East Haven via Short Beach opened on July 31st, 1900, and has been in operation continuously ever since, which is quite a distinction. Of course, the math  majors among our readership will realize that the trolley museum has operated the line for significantly longer now than did the Connecticut Company. The museum celebrated this anniversary with a ceremony at Sprague Station, in East Haven (photos and information here). Kudos to BERA on this milestone! The photo shown here is from that first link and here.

Middletown Exodus

Following the move of two cars from the Middletown & Hummelstown to Rockhill last month, today another three streetcars were loaded onto flatbeds for a trip out of town. This time, the destination of all three cars was the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. All photos below are from this Facebook page.

The first car, shown above, is Red Arrow 83. This car was built in 1932 and is of the same type as car 78, a longtime stalwart of the PTM operating fleet. Car 83 has been stored outside under a tarp for many years in Middletown, but my understanding is that it's in reasonably decent condition. I believe PTM plans to keep it. (Side note: the photo for this car in the PNAERC roster is incorrect and actually shows identical car 77, which is staying in Middletown, but I can't change or update images until our next big photo upload.)

The second car, shown above, is SEPTA 2725, a standard Philadelphia PCC built in 1947. PTM already has two Philadelphia PCCs of this general design, one of them restored and in service.

And the third car, shown here, is SEPTA 2095, another Philadelphia PCC, this time built in 1948. If the rumor mill is to be believed, neither 2095 nor 2725 will become part of the PTM historic collection. One may get scrapped for parts in Washington, but at least one is supposedly destined for a new home somewhere in the northeast. As always, information, corrections, and updates are appreciated! In the meantime, I've updated all three cars to show their new owner as PTM (although as I write this, they're technically in transit and haven't gotten to Washington yet). PTM's collection now stands at 53 pieces while the M&H is down to 19 cars listed on the PNAERC roster. EDIT: PTM posted on their Facebook page that car 2725 is, indeed, intended as a parts source. Its PNAERC record has been updated.

An 80 for PTM

Following the recent post on the Middletown & Hummelstown, Scott Becker from the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum sent some welcome news: car 83, shown here (all photos are courtesy Scott Becker), is going to PTM! The museum hopes to move the car by the end of the year and is currently fundraising for the acquisition here. Donations are cheerfully accepted!

From the photos Scott sent, the car appears to be remarkably solid given how many years it has sat outside. It has stayed tarped that entire time, though, and doesn't appear to have suffered from broken windows or other vandalism. This car is from the second order for 80-series cars placed by Red Arrow, so that will give PTM examples of both series: car 78 from the first order has been beautifully restored to as-built condition, complete with full-height end windows, and operates regularly as shown below. The museum also plans to restore car 83 to a later era as a contrast with car 78.

Thanks to Scott for sending this news!

Streetcars on the Move

It's not every day an old streetcar moves from one museum to another. And it's definitely not every day that two streetcars move from one museum to another in totally unrelated moves. But, that day was today!

First up, New Orleans Public Service 966 has ended a 21-year stint on loan from its owner, the Seashore Trolley Museum, to the Lowell Historical Park in Lowell, Massachusetts. Today it was transported back to Maine and unloaded at Seashore. The above photo is pretty impressive: the Silk Road truck carrying 966 threads its way between the Seashore visitor center and Tower C, complete with a ConnCo open car and even a rainbow visible in the background. Car 966 is believed to be operational, so it will be a welcome addition in Kennebunkport, where the regular operating fleet stands at just three cars thanks to motor failures and various other mechanical issues. Until now it was the only car on the PNAERC list in Lowell; the Gomaco-built replica cars are still there, but since they're replicas, they're not on the list. Thanks to Eric Gilman for posting the photo.

A few hundred miles away in western Pennsylvania, another streetcar was "touching down" in a new home. Philadelphia Rapid Transit 2282, a 1906 Brill product, is the oldest double-truck car from that city in existence and the only example of a really "standard" Philly car from before the Nearside era. It's been stored at Electric City Trolley Museum for some time, but they are short on space and needed to pare down their collection a bit. Fortunately, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum had room, so PTM is the new home for this historic - albeit undoubtedly less-than-pristine - car. It was unloaded in PTM's storage building today. This leaves ECTM with 23 cars on the list, though two of those are stored off-site and not accessioned.

And in unrelated news, an anonymous photographer sent me some pictures of the accidental scrapping of the Waterville Birney described here. I think we all hope that Seashore's future car re-homing efforts will hew more toward the example of 2282 and less toward this.

Philadelphia Car Heading West

Thanks to Bill Wulfert, who has passed along the news that Philadelphia Rapid Transit 2282 has been acquired by the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum from the Electric City Trolley Museum.

Car 2282 is in rough shape but it's extremely historic. It's the oldest double-truck streetcar, and the second-oldest streetcar (after this one, which is in imminent danger of demolition), from Philadelphia in existence. It was built by Brill in 1906 and when retired in 1928 it went to the Shamokin & Edgewood Electric, where it finished out its career 10 years later. The car has been through a few owners in the preservation era: it was at Magee until Hurricane Agnes did in that organization, then it was owned by Ed Blossom for a few decades before his collection went to ECTM in Scranton around 2000. In recent years, it's been stored in ECTM's barn in Moosic. I haven't updated the car's PNAERC record yet - I always do that when the car physically moves, and as far as I know, it's still in Scranton for the moment. But it's good to see that the car is going to another good home at PTM and that ECTM will have a spot open up for something else to be stored inside.

As for the museums involved, PTM has been on a bit of an acquisition spree lately in the wake of acquiring a new storage building along their line. This will be their third acquisition in the last couple of years, after Shamokin & Mt. Carmel 33 and Port Authority Transit 1713. For ECTM, this is their second deaccession in the last few years, after Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453. The museum doesn't really have any space to expand, nor anywhere to store cars outdoors, so if they want to acquire a new piece of equipment they need to get rid of something they have.

Brill Semi-Convertible Acquired by PTM

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum is on a collecting spree. After acquiring the "Terrible Trolley" PCC car earlier this summer, on Friday they took delivery of a far more inherently historic car: Shamokin & Mt. Carmel Transit 33. S&MC 33 was built by Brill in 1905 and it's a surprisingly rare example of a Brill "rubber stamp" semi-convertible. Cars of this design ran on a huge number of streetcar lines, especially small-town lines, in the early years of the century. But most were long gone by the time the preservation movement rose up, so the truly "off-the-shelf" Brill semi-convertible is nearly extinct. In fact, this is arguably the last example of the classic type.

This car was built for the S&MC and ran on that system until it was retired in 1938 (in-service photo here). It was then acquired by the Knoebel's Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, where for many decades it sat underneath a large shed, largely out of sight for much of that time. The family elected to dispose of the car this year and, fortunately, elected to convey it to PTM as indicated by the museum's post here.

A Terrible Acquisition

Congratulations to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum on their newest acquisition, shown above in a post from their Facebook page today. The new arrival is Port Authority Transit 1713, a typical 1700-series PCC built in 1949 by St. Louis. As evidenced by its rather modern paint job, this car ran very late: it was still in service into the late 1990s and wasn't sold into preservation until 1998. Since that time it's been in private hands in Ohio, part of a small collection of Pittsburgh PCCs known as Penn Ohio Electric Railway. It, and the other two PCCs in the collection, have been for sale for a while. So what makes this car special?

That's right - car 1713 is the famous, or perhaps infamous, "Terrible Trolley." Pittsburgh had a lot of PCC cars with one-off paint schemes, but this car got one of the better known ones. Sometime around 1980 it was painted up for the Steelers, with "Terrible Trolley" painted on the side among various other embellishments (above photo taken in 1986 by Peter Ehrlich). By 1987, the car's livery had changed again to original Pittsburgh Railway colors (shown here), but that didn't last too long either. It ended its days in modern LRV colors, painted up like the 4000-series rebuilds, though this car remained a relatively original 1949 PCC car until the end. From the sounds of it, PTM is indeed planning on restoring this as the "Terrible Trolley." It should be quite the attention getter!

Miscellaneous updates

A couple of updates have been made to cars on the PNAERC list. First, courtesy of an HRA end-of-year roundup comes news that South Shore 106 in Boone, Iowa has been returned to operation for the first time in some two decades. The car had formerly been listed as "displayed inoperable" but this has been suitably updated. This brings to three the number of museums with operational South Shore cars; of the other two, IRM (like Boone) runs its using the original pantographs while East Troy runs its cars much more frequently using retrofitted trolley poles for ease of operation.

And via e-mail Walt Stafa points out that West Penn 832's listing has been perpetrating a falsehood, namely that the car's trucks are Brill 76E2's, which they are not. Oops!! They're actually a Cincinnati design, probably unique to this order, for which I cannot find an official designation. So lacking better information I'm calling them Cincinnati Arch Bars.

Work begun on PTC Peter Witt

Word comes from Bruce Wells of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum that restoration work is starting on PTC 8042, a Peter Witt acquired by the museum in 2005 from the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton. Of the four surviving Philadelphia Peter Witts, this 1923 car is the second eldest, slightly older than car 8530 (privately owned) and car 8534 (still owned by ECTM in Scranton) but newer than car 6618 at Seashore, which was rebuilt from a 1916 "Nearside" car. Keith Bray, who has done impressive work in recent years on cars at Scranton, National Capital, and Baltimore among others, is working on roof repairs to car 8042. The car is said to be largely sound, and is entirely complete, but does need some repair work in localized areas. I believe the plan is indeed to make the car fully operational so that it can join PTM's other regular PTC standard car, double-ender 5326, in service.