List Clean-up

For the end of the year, I'm doing a bit of list clean-up. There are quite a few cars on the list whose status is uncertain, but there are three that I've decided to remove from the list because their current existence seems especially doubtful.

All three are PCCs. The first is Muni 1111, a PCC built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1707. It was sold in 1994 to Gunnar Henrioulle, aka Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway, and was stored in Lake Tahoe until around 2007. Supposedly, that year it was sold to the City of Savannah, GA, and moved to Warren Railcar Services in Warren, PA, for conversion into a battery-powered heritage trolley. But there, the train goes cold - I've never seen a photo of it in Warren (or in Savannah, for that matter), and I haven't heard anything at all about the car in 15 years. Warren Railcar Services is long out of business and the Savannah heritage trolley was inaugurated (using a Melbourne car), ran for a while, and then ended. My best guess is that car 1111 was scrapped at some point. It's shown above, in a photo I believe was taken around 2006-2007, in Lake Tahoe; the two cars to the right were among the dozen or so that were sold to a developer in St. Charles, MO, with all of the PCCs being scrapped in 2011 after the developer went bust in the 2008 recession.

The other two PCC cars being taken off the PNAERC list are Tandy Subway rebuilds ("Winnebagos") of DC Transit 1945 air-electric PCC cars. Tandy cars 3 and 6 were supposedly acquired by Brookville Equipment Corporation in Pennsylvania, either as rebuild candidates or possibly as parts sources, and I believe they were indeed moved to Brookville. But I haven't seen any recent photos of them and they don't appear in current aerial views of the Brookville site. My guess is that they've been scrapped. UPDATE: Thanks to Wesley Paulson for confirming that these cars have, indeed, been scrapped by Brookville.

All three cars (EDIT: car 1111 only) qualify as "mystery cars" since I don't have any real confirmation that they were scrapped, so if you can contribute any information, it's much appreciated. Thank you!

WRM acquiring a trio of California electric cars

Many thanks to David Johnston for sending along the news that the Western Railway Museum is acquiring three electric cars local to its area. The cars have been under the purview of an organization called Friends of Light Rail and are stored indoors on the property of the Sacramento Regional Transit light rail system. However FoLR, which sounds like it was kind of an ephemeral organization to begin with, has essentially melted away, so the cars were made available to WRM.

The first car being acquired is Pacific Gas & Electric 18, shown above. As far as I know, the history of this car is a bit of a mystery insofar as its builder and vintage are unknown. It began life as a California car and was later enclosed, as were many Sacramento cars. I believe it's similar to PG&E 14, currently preserved at WRM. These two cars, 14 and 18, have the unusual distinction of being the only "rope brake" cars on the PNAERC roster.

Next up is Sacramento Northern 27, shown here, a suburban California car built in 1908 by St. Louis for the Northern Electric. It was used in "Elverta Scoot" service between Chico and Elverta (more info here). It's the oldest SN electric car preserved and is a unique piece of equipment among the extant SN fleet.

Finally, we have Pacific Gas & Electric 65, a lightweight "Christmas present car" built in 1929 by American for Sacramento. This car is identical to PG&E 63, already preserved at WRM, and the museum tentatively plans to ultimately restore whichever of the two cars is assessed to be in better condition.

There's one additional car stored as part of the FoLR collection: Pacific Gas & Electric 36, shown here, is a large California car built by American in 1913. However it's not going to be preserved for two reasons: first of all, it's in extremely poor condition and its body is collapsing; second, identical sister car 35 is preserved in fully (and beautifully) restored condition in Sacramento as a representative of the type.

Speaking of Pacific Gas & Electric 35, David also sent along photos of that car, shown below. Car 35 was restored in the 1980s by Fred Bennett for the San Jose light rail system, and given their location, the car was given a faux paint job to represent "San Jose Railroad 129" - a car that never existed. However in 1999 the car was sent back home to Sacramento, where it has been stored in good condition - though largely unused - in its San Jose garb. (I have seen early-2000s photos of it lettered PG&E 35, but those may have been stickers or magnets used for a one-time event.)

Atlanta Subway Car Preserved

In a slightly surprising piece of news, the Southeastern Railway Museum outside of Atlanta - which has a small collection of electric cars but is mostly focused on steam road equipment - has acquired a car from the initial order for Atlanta subway cars. MARTA 509 arrived at the museum on Wednesday and will be placed on public display there, according to this press release.

This is actually a relatively significant acquisition, historically speaking. First, of course, it has local importance. Car 509 is the first and only MARTA car in preservation, and given the paucity of trolley museums in the southeast and the difficulty in putting large subway cars like this to practical use in a museum setting, may very well be the only MARTA car in preservation for quite a long time. Amazingly, I think it's also only the second electric railway car from Atlanta ever to be preserved intact after retirement (you may have to think hard to guess the first), at least if you only count cars still around today.

Furthermore, this car has some national significance too. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, several cities built all-new heavy-rail subway systems, including not just Atlanta but also San Francisco, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. Other than a pair of WMATA cars that have supposedly been squirreled away for safekeeping, but to my knowledge have not yet appeared publicly as historic artifacts, this MARTA car is the first car from any of these modern subway systems to be preserved in the US. (I say "in the US" because this preserved car from the Montreal Metro is also from a modern subway system, albeit a very unusual system built for rubber-tire cars.)

EDIT: Thanks to Richard Schauer for sending a link to this video about the history of car 509 and its donation to SERM. I was quite impressed; the video has a good mixture of technical/design history of the car and general background information on MARTA.

Another Seashore deaccession

The Seashore Trolley Museum is underway with its "fourth round of re-homing" and in addition to the South Shore car and Long Island Rail Road car mentioned here back in July, there's a third car that's available: MBTA 3283, a line car built in 1949. Car 3283 is pretty unremarkable; it's the only car on the list built by Henry Dow, but Dow wasn't a car builder, it was a local company that (if I recall correctly) mostly built houses. The most interesting thing about the car is probably the story, on Seashore's deaccession listing, about its involvement in a major head-on collision with another work car in 1969 that killed a man and injured 16 more, in part the result of the crews of both cars having been drinking. Ah, the good? old days...

Regardless, the car arrived at Seashore in 2007 and ran briefly before it was sidelined with electrical issues. If you're interested in 3283, there's a catch: Seashore is keeping the trucks, motors, and electrical equipment. Only the body is available. With the market for line car bodies pretty slim, this car will mostly likely end up scrapped, but only time will tell for sure.

Northeastern Updates

There are a few updates to the PNAERC data out of museums (and non-museums) in the northeast. First, NYCTA 9075, an R-33ML subway car from New York, was moved over the weekend from its home of 17 years on a plinth in front of Queens Borough Hall. Many thanks to Bill Wall for the striking photo above. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the car has gone, though online rumors suggest somewhere in New Jersey (which doesn't narrow it down much!). At the time the car was sold, it was said to have been purchased by an art dealer, so make of that what you will. Any updates are appreciated!

Second, there's another update to the ongoing saga of the deaccessed Warehouse Point cars. Halton County Radial Railway has come to an agreement to acquire Canadian National 6714, a boxcab locomotive from the Montreal suburban electrification. The locomotive was built in Toronto (it was news to me that this series of six locomotives were built in three different locations!) so has some local significance in addition to its technological significance. That means that, of the six cars deaccessed by CTM, three have been scrapped and two sold with just one still available: LIRR 4153. Any takers?

And finally, Branford's restoration shop has posted on its Facebook page that the wheel sets and motors have been pulled from underneath their diminutive four-wheel GE locomotive "Amy." Surely one of the more obscure pieces of equipment at the museum, this 1902 industrial boxcab gains a bit of prominence on the PNAERC list because the top line in the alphabetical "Now or Formerly Owned By" search box on the homepage is always Abendroth Foundry, the locomotive's owner. It's been out of service for years but that looks like it will be changing in the near future. The locomotive's condition has been changed to "undergoing restoration."

Boston PCC Overhaul Progress

Since we've had a "PCC overhaul program progress report" from Philadelphia, why not one from Boston, too?

Indeed, the T is also going through their PCC fleet and rebuilding it a handful of cars at a time, though there are some differences. First, these cars weren't modernized to quite the extend the Philadelphia cars were - they still retain their original running gear, including air-electric brakes. They did receive air-conditioning and sealed windows, though. Anyway, the overhaul program started with cars 3265 and 3234 in 2019. It was suspended for a time, but 3265 returned to service in April of this year, and car 3234 has now joined it back home in Mattapan.

The next two cars to get rebuilt are, apparently, 3238 and 3260. The former is just one of the members of the Mattapan fleet (it's on the left in the photo above, by Cam Moore via Facebook), but the latter car is a bit of a special case. Car 3260 was involved in a fairly serious collision back in December 2017, when it was rear-ended by 3262. Both cars have been out of service since. And while it's good that 3260 is being rebuilt, it appears that car 3262 - which had its front end badly stove in - has now had its rear end cut off aft of the bolster. This section will be grafted onto car 3260. I'm not certain whether the T has already cut up the rest of 3262, or whether the incomplete shell will hang around as a parts source, but in either case I don't think it qualifies for the PNAERC list anymore. So it's been removed. The Mattapan PCC fleet, formerly at 10 cars, now numbers nine.

Philadelphia PCC-II Overhaul Program

A recent post on a PCC group on Facebook, made by a SEPTA employee, brought readers up to date on the overhaul program currently underway at SEPTA. That agency has a fleet of 18 "PCC-II" streetcars - Philadelphia PCC cars that were torn down to their frames and rebuilt by Brookville around 2004-2005, complete with new (though "PCC-inspired") control and motors as well as sealed windows and A/C. After about 15 years the cars were all pulled from service and they're now going through an in-house overhaul. This job, unlike the last one, is generally sympathetic, and they're emerging more-or-less indistinguishable from how they went in.

Of the cars in the fleet (list here - note that this is not an all-inclusive list of cars on PNAERC owned by SEPTA), four have already been overhauled and outshopped: 2332 (outshopped June 2021), 2328 (outshopped August 2021), 2337 (outshopped June 2022), and 2322 (outshopped within the last few weeks). Four more are currently in the shop being overhauled: 2324, 2326, 2327, and 2333. The remaining 10 cars are still waiting their turn. Cars undergoing overhaul have been noted as "undergoing restoration;" cars that haven't yet gone into the shop are "stored operable;" and cars that have been overhauled are described as "operated often." This may be a bit aspirational for the moment, but sooner or later it's bound to come true.