312 pale ale, anyone?

Thanks to Lucas McKay, who is maintaining a list of traction car bodies, for pointing out that CTA 2347 - until now included on the PNAERC list - has been heavily modified for use as a Goose Island "beer trailer." The above photo was taken at the recent Chicago Auto Show by Chuck Westerman and posted on Facebook; it shows the hapless CTA car open for business, with its interior seats arranged as beer garden seating no less.

This car was one of only a handful of 1969-vintage Budd 2200-series CTA cars still in existence. The only set that's formally preserved, 2243-2244, is at the Illinois Railway Museum and is operated on a semi-regular basis. There's also 2348, which was gutted and moved to the roof of the Google building in Chicago, and a pair that's still on CTA property in use as a changing room and storage locker. Those aren't on the list because they're not really "preserved" - at least not yet, in the case of the cars still at CTA. The only other one was 2347, which until last year was stored at an RV company in Fairfield, Ohio of all things. It's even visible on Google Street View as recently as June 2018. But as part of its Goose Island rebuilding it had a large portion of one end cut away so it can be hauled behind a semi tractor and the entire car body was narrowed by a foot or so, presumably so that it doesn't need an over-width permit. Yikes! With all this modification it's not close enough to original configuration that it qualifies for PNAERC, so it's off the list. Bottoms up!

The Wilmington car

A business trip found me in Wilmington, Delaware this past weekend and that got me curious about the last surviving car from that city's street railway system: Delaware Electric Power 120, preserved today in operating condition at the Electric City Trolley Museum. (Photo above by Frank Dutton)

Until now this car has been listed in PNAERC as having been built by Laclede in 1904 and having run for DEP from then until about 1940, when it was sold to Philadelphia and used as a rail grinder until retirement and preservation in 1971. Some quick digging revealed that I had my early history wrong: DEP wasn't created until 1927. Before then it was Wilmington & Philadelphia Traction, and before 1910 that system was Wilmington City Railway. So I've updated the car's ownership history and I think I've got that correct. (I should mention that Wilmington had some of the most horrendously ugly streetcars ever built - feast your eyes on this - but fortunately 120 is not one of them and is a very attractive little car!)

The biggest question is exactly who built the car and when. ECTM's website says that it was built either by Laclede or Jackson & Sharp around 1904, so of course my next step was to refer to Harold Cox's roster site. This indeed has rosters of both builders but it's not apparent whether or not either roster is complete. There aren't any orders listed under Laclede built for lines in Delaware while there are several orders listed under J&S for Wilmington City Railway that have sketchy information and no fleet numbers listed. (I also can't figure out WCR numbering at all, which judging from Cox's order list seems to have bounced back and forth between two-digit, 100-series, 200-series, and 300-series numbering.)

Anyone have any thoughts? I'm tempted to change the car's builder to J&S but either way I'm just speculating. I have, at least, made a note that the car's builder and date of construction is uncertain.

The Electromobile goes to the Stourbridge Line

This photo is from a recent post on RyPN which relates that Scranton Transit 505, the last surviving Osgood-Bradley Electromobile, has been moved from its home at the Electric City Trolley Museum to the Stourbridge Line 30 miles away in Honesdale, PA. The latter operation will take point on some of the significant body repair and rebuilding work which (obviously) remains to be done. The scale of this project is impressive, given the totally disassembled kit that ECTM has started with, and it will be fascinating to see car 505 slowly regain its original appearance. On the PNAERC list the car's location has been changed to the Stourbridge Line, which is already included as an organization because they use a handful of Lackawanna MU cars in their excursion train. This is my standard practice to make it easier to track cars by physical location; other equipment like this snow sweeper in Baltimore are also stored at museums that do not own them. In my judgment it makes more sense to list them by physical location, at least in cases where the physical location already exists in PNAERC as an owner.

Baltimore Streetcar Museum updates

From our friend David Wilson at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum come some updates of projects currently underway there. First up is United Railways & Electric 1164, pictured above, a classic 1902 Brill-built open car complete with Maximum Traction trucks. This car is in the shop for roof work, including not only new canvas but some new and refurbished wood parts and copper sheathing where appropriate. Amazingly, David reports that there aren't any "extra" tack holes under the canvas, suggesting that what's being removed may be the original 1902 canvas. This car was removed from regular service very early, in 1922, at which point it was put into (presumably indoor) storage. As such it likely saw only 20 summers of use. That a car like this still exists at all is a virtual miracle.

Joining car 1164 in the shop is Baltimore Consolidated 1050, a single-truck closed car built in 1898 by Brownell. This car was retired for platform rebuilding a few years ago and this has been an on-again, off-again project that has now been resumed in earnest. The car is having both platforms rehabbed along with a general exterior restoration. Photo by David Wilson.

And last is Newark PCC 26, shown here in a 2014 photo. This car has been the subject of some recent fundraising and the payoff is now in progress, as the car has been transported to a body and paint shop in Columbia, PA. The plan is for it to remain there for a few months while its exterior is restored and then for it to return to BSM. This method of restoration is fairly unusual in traction preservation; usually the painters come to the car rather than the other way around. The results promise to be impressive.

Orange Empire updates

Many thanks to Chris Baldwin of the Orange Empire Railway Museum, who has sent a series of updates on their equipment. These are all changes from the previous status of the listed cars.

Recently-acquired LAMR 144, recently-overhauled LARy 525, and LARy PCC 3001 are all now listed as "operated occasionally." Muni 171 and LAMTA 3165, which in the past saw occasional use, are now "displayed operable." PE Birney 331, PE office car 1299, and LATL standard cars 1423, 1450, and 1559 are now officially out of service and are listed as "displayed inoperable" (formerly they'd been listed as "operated occasionally" or "displayed operable"). Similarly, PE "Blimp" 314 is now out of service but is in storage. LATL PCC 3100 and LARy 1201 are now seeing more use and the status of both cars has been changed to "operated often."

There are a few more substantive changes than switches to whether a car is judged operational or how often it operates. PE steeplecab 1624 is now undergoing restoration, starting with an interior paint job and some wiring and electrical systems repair. The locomotive has been in rough shape for years but it's complete and an excellent candidate for full restoration. LARy 665 is another car that is now under restoration; this longtime regular service car has gone into the shop for a general overhaul.

Longtime regular service car PE 717, a "Hollywood" car that for years was painted fancifully in a "Valley Seven" livery but was more recently returned to as-built colors, has been put into storage following an incident that caused some damage. The car is operational but requires repairs before going back into public operation. Marty Bernard photo.

And LA car 1435, shown above in a photo from about a year ago, has been sold to an individual and moved off-property for preservation. This car was acquired as a body and is a duplicate (triplicate?) of two other complete cars in the OERM collection so it was not intended to be kept at the museum. I'm working on tracking down where it went. UPDATE: thanks to John Smatlak and Gary Starre from OERM, who relate that car 1435 has been transferred to the Riverside County Fairgrounds in Indio, where the plan is to cosmetically restore it and place it on display. EDIT: Update here

Five Mile Beach Electric open car to be restored

From this press release comes the news that Five Mile Beach Electric 20, one of four open cars preserved from the FMBE and the only one currently in "car body" condition, has been donated by former owner Wildwood Trolley to Liberty Historic Railway. The former organization acquired the car something like 25-30 years ago and since then had stored it in a building in Wildwood, but early plans to restore the car collapsed and it had simply been in dead storage for many years. The car hasn't just been donated to LHR, however: that organization has shipped it to Gomaco in Iowa to be restored. The scope of the rebuild isn't clear from the press release - it's not obvious whether this is intended to be an operational restoration or a more limited cosmetic one - but it's very encouraging that significant resources are being put into this car. Many thanks to Bill Wall for bringing this to my attention.

LHR has now expanded its collection of streetcars from zero to two in a matter of months, having acquired the body of Trenton Street Railway 288 - a rare car which makes FMBE 20 look like a gem - in late 2018. Car 288, which is fairly significant, has been stabilized and tarped. Car 20 is also pretty historic in its own right and stands to be the only FMBE car preserved in the Garden State.

UPDATE: This article was posted on February 1st in the Cape May County Herald stating that some $300,000 had been donated towards the restoration of FMBE 20 and, moreover, that LHR's plan is for an operational restoration of car 20. Evidently the intention is to operate it at an as-yet-nonexistent railway museum in Boonton, the current home of the United Railroad Historical Society.

H&F car relocated in Myersville

Thanks to Bill Wall, who has forwarded along a link (here) to some photo and information regarding Hagerstown & Frederick 150. The last I'd heard of this car, in May, it had been acquired by the City of Myersville, MD and had presumably been moved to the city's Harp Park. The link confirms that this is the case and contains some current (as of the move, which I believe was roughly a year ago) photos of the car including the one above. This same web page also includes some detailed plans for the new town library, which will include car 150 as a display piece within a room at the back of the library. It sounds like a very impressive plan and one that will ensure the car's continued preservation and accessibility to the public.

As late as the H&F lasted - the mid-1950s - and as popular as it was with traction fans, not a single car from the line was preserved intact. There are only three bodies around, all in roughly comparable condition: car 150, a decidedly non-H&F-standard streetcar built for Columbia, SC (and the only surviving car from that southern city); homebuilt box motor number 5; and car 168, the only classic H&F combine still around. All three are on display along the old H&F itself but car 150 will soon be the only one with an indoor home.