Capital Transit sweeper running again

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for forwarding along a good piece of news: Capital Transit 09, an 1899 McGuire-Cummings snow sweeper preserved at the National Capital Trolley Museum in Wheaton, Maryland, is now running again after several years out of service. NCTM members had to repair some of the car's resistance grids but it's back in service as shown in the above and below photos forwarded by Wesley.

Car 09 is one of seven hometown cars preserved at NCTM but it's the only piece of non-revenue equipment. When retired in 1962 the car was sold to Louis Buehler of Railways to Yesterday (now the Rockhill Trolley Museum) and it was moved to Orbisonia to join the growing collection of traction equipment there. Following the catastrophic fire at NCTM in 2003, in which two Washington DC snow sweepers - one of them car 07, an identical sister to 09 - were destroyed, a plan was hatched to see car 09 returned to home territory. This plan came to fruition in 2012 when car 09 went to NCTM and in exchange Rockhill received Iowa Terminal 3, a slightly newer McGuire-Cummings sweeper that had been stored at Branford since 2005.

Wesley also sent along an interesting piece of history: the bill of sale from DC Transit in 1962 when car 09 was sold to Louis Buehler. A complete, operating, 19th-century snow sweeper went for the princely sum of $200 in those days. What a steal!

Housekeeping

As usual, I've been making changes to the PNAERC roster here and there as I go along. I'm constantly correcting date here or adding some bit of technical information there. Recently I was able to pick up a very nice book on the Edmonton Radial Railway from Keven Farrell of the Seashore Trolley Museum. This permitted me to fill in a lot of electrical, mechanical, and dimensional data for the ten preserved cars from that system. These cars all reside at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society in their hometown and make up an eclectic mix. Car 42, shown in the above photo, is one of three survivors built by St. Louis in 1912 with the relatively rare turtleback roof design and was completely restored by ERRS from chicken coop condition, complete with St. Louis 47 trucks cast and assembled by the Society.

Then at the opposite end of the continent there's the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society. Olin Anderson pointed out that cars 5221 and 5223, both Newark subway work cars in their later years, were listed on PNAERC under United Railroad Historical Society ownership but for consistency (given their location) are probably better off listed under NJERHS ownership. So I've made that change. I'm still seeking more historical information on both of these distinctive and mechanically complete, but enigmatic, cars. UPDATE: Bill Wall has kindly provided some additional information on 5221 and 5223, not only filling in some motor/truck/control details but confirming that 5223 was indeed rebuilt by PSCT in the 1950s from a standard passenger car numbered 2683. Apparently NJERHS has plans to eventually rebuild it in passenger car form, which would make it identical to car 2651, their PSCT car from the same series.

And finally, thanks to Joel Salomon who has confirmed that Philadelphia work motor W-54, which had until recently been listed on PNAERC (but as "situation unknown"), was indeed scrapped a number of years ago while still at SEPTA. It has been removed from the list.

Plans afoot for BCER 153

Of the 13 preserved pieces of equipment from British Columbia Electric Railway, surely the most elusive in recent years has been city car 153. Its body has been owned by the City of North Vancouver since the 1980s but for most (all?) of that time has been stored out of sight under the bleachers in a city park. During this time it's been cosmetically restored, with work apparently ongoing but nearing some level of completion. A recent article here includes a couple of photos of the car and a description of some of the work that has been done on it. Apparently the car is going to be fitted with Belgian trucks, though of what type I'm not certain. And there are big plans for it once cosmetic restoration is done: it is due to be moved to the not-yet-built Extraordinary Museum in the West Esplanade area of North Vancouver.

One intriguing thing the article mentions involves the car's builder: it says that it was built by Stephenson. I've always had the car listed in PNAERC as built by Brill, but it doesn't show up in Brill order lists so it makes sense that it was built by Stephenson (which was, after all, a Brill subsidiary in 1908). Sure enough, some Googling revealed this confirmation (page 121) of the car's actual builder. It's always good to get errors like this corrected! And it means that BCER 153 is the newest of the ten cars built by Stephenson known to be preserved.

A late loss of a curve-sider

I've got bad news for fans of Cincinnati curve-siders. Cincinnati Street Railway 2465, a typical "postage stamp" car built for that city in 1923, is gone - or at least largely gone. The car, shown above about 10-15 years ago, was acquired as a body by Gary Eubanks of Marietta, Georgia and cosmetically restored to resemble an Atlanta Northern curve-sider (see here and scroll down). The plan as of 2005 or so was to place the car in a planned building known as the Georgia Northern Building that was to be constructed in Marietta. Unfortunately the recession interceded, pausing the project and relegating car 2465 to storage. Then in 2013 Gary passed away, making the car's future even more uncertain. For the last couple of years I'd had its condition listed as "situation unknown" because I wasn't even entirely sure it was still around.

Some recent Googling has filled in the story. A new retail and restaurant development called Marietta Square Market has sprung up on the approximate site of the envisioned Georgia Northern Building. MSM also acquired the car, moving it off-site for work. It's shown in the above photo, taken in June 2018 and posted on Facebook, as a largely complete body in what looks like good structural condition (though likely without much of an interior).

But that was then, and this is now:

The photo is from this site, which chronicles in photographs the new Marietta Square Market. In fact MSM just opened yesterday, on the 28th, and seems to be quite a hit. But as for their streetcar, there's something, uh, missing. They appear to have lopped off (and presumably thrown away) about two-thirds of the car, grafting the rear end onto the front third of the car to create a kind of food stand. It's too bad, as one would think that they could have found some way to incorporate the car in its entirety into the project. But obviously that was not to be and at this point there's not enough of car 2465 left to consider it a preserved piece of equipment. It's been removed from the PNAERC list. With this the number of Cincinnati curve-siders in existence drops to six, of which three are very non-typical single-truckers from Knoxville, and the number of preserved cars from Cincinnati Street Railway drops to three.

Pittsburgh PCC mystery solved

Back in 2016, I posted this message asking for information on a pair of Pittsburgh PCC cars: 1734 and 1773. Thanks to Bruce Wells and Steve Kuznetsov, I've now got an answer on that!

It turns out that car 1734 was moved back in 2015 to a building in Ellwood City, south of its old site in New Castle, where it is now the subject of an effort to restore the car. The goal is to operate the car, possibly at a trolley museum and it is being regauged using B3 trucks from Boston. The folks working on the car are also interested in help with this, so any volunteers in the area are free to inquire about helping with car 1734. Although it's still owned by the owner of Power Superconductor Applications, the company in New Castle that was host to a small collection of Pittsburgh PCC cars until a few years ago, it's no longer at PSA and its ownership has been updated.

As for car 1773, it turns out that the car was scrapped for parts, so it has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Interested in helping solve some of these mysteries? Click here and let me know if you know the answers to any of these questions.

Dallas PCC to be disposed of

Word comes from a worker at the Middletown & Hummelstown in Pennsylvania that Boston PCC 3323, a double-ender built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 as Dallas Railway & Terminal 605, is to be scrapped in the coming weeks if another museum doesn't step forward to take it. The car is shown above in a 2002 photo; while it's complete, its condition hasn't improved any in the 17 years since the picture was taken and it suffers from the severe body rot common to preserved cars of this series. This particular car ran in Boston from 1958 until 1980, when it went to Branford; that museum traded it (and a redundant South Brooklyn box motor) to the M&H in exchange for Red Arrow 84 in 1992.

It's not clear to me whether this is envisioned to be part of a larger site cleanup or whether 3323 is the only car currently on the chopping block in Middletown. Its loss would not be of great significance, given the other eleven cars of this type extant, but it is notable that nine of those are at Seashore and a tenth is rotting away in Windber, PA. The other only car of this type in a museum other than Seashore (following the recent loss of 3334) is 3333 at Warehouse Point.

Third Avenue open car 651

Thanks to Richard Berk, who has sent in a couple of recent photos of Third Avenue Railway System 651 at the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton. This car has been the subject of a pretty monumental restoration over the years, going from a hulk to a complete body (and nearly complete car) with what would seem to be mostly new wood.

This is an old car, built by Brill in 1898 for Union Railway (though almost immediately going into the Third Avenue fleet), and sold in 1914 to Five Mile Beach Electric in Wildwood, NJ where it ran until 1945. Open cars weren't the most popular targets for resale as houses and sheds but for whatever reason several FMBE open cars, including this one, found post-retirement use in "chicken coop" form.

ECTM is currently rebuilding and regauging a pair of Brill 22 "Maximum Traction" trucks for the car. This may make car 651 unique among restored car bodies; I can't think of anywhere else in the U.S. that has sourced correct MaxTrac trucks for a restored car, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that. This pair of trucks came from Lisbon, where the tracks are 900mm gauge (a bit under 3'), so new wheel sets and a lot of new steel has been called for here. When complete, this car will be a truly stunning piece.