Hershey Transit Car Dismantled

I believe this "news" is a year or two out of date, but a report came across my Internet browser that Hershey Transit 3 has been dismantled. I have, accordingly, taken it off the PNAERC list.

One of two Hershey Transit cars known (until now) to exist, car 3 was built as a semiconvertible combine by Brill in 1903 for the Hummeltown & Campbellstown Street Railway. It later went to Hershey, at some point got rebuilt as a line car (in-service photo here), and was retired in 1948. It has actually been in preservation for a long time: its body was acquired way back in 1965 by Trolley Valhalla, and later made its way to Buckingham Valley Trolley Association and Electric City Trolley Museum before the car went home to Hershey in 2006. The photo above shows it being moved into the old car barn in Hershey, where the local historical society was storing it (and is currently embarked on a major restoration of Hershey Transit 7, an all-steel suburban car).

Car 3's condition was extremely poor, so it was dismantled. Major components have been saved (thanks to Joel Salomon for the above photo of one of the car's ends), but if car 3 arises in the future, I would imagine it will be more of a replica than a restoration. The PNAERC list now stands at 2,086 cars total.

And in unrelated news, the Fox River Trolley Museum has acquired ex-Rio de Janeiro open car 1719 from the Middletown & Hummelstown. More information is here. This is a standard Rio double-trucker and actually spent about 20 years in South Elgin, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when it was owned by Wendell Dillinger and stored at the museum. This change doesn't affect the PNAERC list, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Middletown Update

Thanks to Bill Wall for sending along photos and updates of the Middletown & Hummelstown collection being thinned. Four cars were scrapped over the last few days. The first two, shown below in photos taken a few months ago, were Chicago Transit Authority S371 and S372. These were CTA 4000s rebuilt in 1972 as work motors, sold in 1979 to the Buckingham Valley group, and then acquired by the M&H in the mid-1980s for parts.

These cars are certainly no big loss, especially given their condition, but it is kind of interesting how drastically the ranks of surviving 4000-series work motors have been thinned in recent years. From seven or eight examples a decade ago, there are now only two CTA S-series 4000-type work motors still in existence: S373 at IRM, stored in rough condition, and S374 at Northern Ohio, not accessioned and stored in poor condition.

The third car that has been cut up in Middletown is MBTA double-end PCC 3323, ex-Dallas Railway & Terminal 605. This car was at Branford from 1980 to 1992 and went to the M&H as part of a trade deal, but was in extremely poor condition thanks in part to salt damage from its years in Boston. The photos below were taken by Bill Wall. Trucks from one of the work motor 4000s are visible next to the PCC.

There are now 11 Dallas double-end PCCs on the list, or 10 if you discount the car in Windber that is due to be scrapped anytime. All but one of those is at Seashore.

And the final car, other than a Pullman heavyweight car that is supposedly getting cut up this week, is Philadelphia snow sweeper C121, shown below in photos by Bill Wall.

Parts from this car are being salvaged for use at other trolley museums. (Edit: C121 isn't being fully dismantled until Tuesday, but enough of it was gone by Monday evening to justify taking it off the list.) I was never really clear on the history of C121; my records suggest it was retired in 1975, but I don't know how it got to the M&H, which didn't really exist until the mid-1980s. Anyway, as with the CTA 4000s and the PCC, this is not a big loss from a perspective of historical significance. There are still eight of these big Philly sweepers in existence, a couple of which are in very poor shape but several of which are very nicely preserved.

When Wendell Dillinger died in 2023, there were 24 cars on the PNAERC list under M&H ownership. That number is now down to 15. Besides eight Lackawanna MU cars, the fleet now consists of four Philadelphia cars (a PCC, two ex-CTA "spam cans," and a Red Arrow 80-series car); two Brooklyn cars (a convertible and a box motor); and the ex-Kansas City steeplecab. The PNAERC list in its entirety now stands at 2,087 cars.

New Technology at NYTM

Thanks to Edrick Ang for news that New York City Transit Authority 3007, shown above, was moved to the New York Transit Museum today. Thanks also to James McGinty, who posted this photo on Facebook. The car has apparently been spruced up and made presentable for display as an historic artifact. As such, I've added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 3007 is pretty unusual. It's one of nine R110B type cars built in 1992 for the IND/BMT side of the New York subway system as part of the "New Technology" test program. These cars (and 10 type R110A cars built for the IRT side of the system at the same time) were intended from the start as prototypes, not production cars, and they spent less than a decade in service. The last of the R110B cars were withdrawn from service in 2000, but at least some have simply been stored since then. The R110B cars were permanently arranged into three-car trains, motor-trailer-motor, and car 3007 is one of the motor cars. It has relatively early AC traction motors and chopper control. Quite a bit more information on these cars can be found here.

The PNAERC list now includes 2,091 cars in all.

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.

Berkshire Hills Arrives Home

Thanks to Jordan Helzer, who has sent the photos shown here of the famous parlor car "Berkshire Hills" being unloaded last week at the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. This returns it much closer to its original stomping grounds in western Massachusetts; indeed, SFTM is less than 20 miles as the crow flies from the old Berkshire Street Railway route through North Adams.

As seen above in a Sam Bartlett photo, the car body has been moved inside the SFTM barn, probably the first time it's really been kept under cover since it was sold by BSR back in 1932. It's been placed atop correct-type Brill 27A trucks that were acquired by Seashore in 2022 from IRM, which itself had salvaged them long ago from a North Shore Line snow sweeper that was scrapped back in the 1960s. SFTM obtained the trucks a year or so ago from Seashore and has cleaned them up and painted them in the meantime. With this acquisition, the SFTM traction collection stands at five pieces, all from the Bay State.

Columbus Spaghetti Restaurant Car Added to List

News appeared online today that the streetcar body in the defunct Columbus, Ohio, Spaghetti Warehouse has been saved for preservation by a local historical organization. The car is shown above, in a photo from here taken today, after removal from the building where it had resided since 1978. Since the car is now owned by a museum, and since I have narrowed its likely origins down to a specific series of five cars, I figure I've got enough to add it to the PNAERC list. So, here it is.

I'm reasonably sure that this is one of five cars built by American in 1922 for the Texas Interurban Railway in their 100-104 series. TIRy was an unusual system; among the last new electric interurban lines built in the country, it had lines from Dallas to Denton and Terrell that opened in 1923. The system closed in 1932, after which its lightweight cars were sold to Dallas Railway & Terminal for city service. This quintet ran as DR&T 111-115 until sometime in the mid-1950s. This car, the only ex-TIRy car preserved, was rebuilt by Spaghetti Warehouse around 1977 and has been a centerpiece on the Columbus restaurant since then.

Its new owner, the Rickenbacker Woods Foundation, is a new addition to PNAERC and a bit of an anomaly. It seems to be part museum, part community group, with a significant educational component. It's based around the boyhood home of World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker and also focuses on Granville T. Woods, an inventor who lived in Columbus during the late 1800s and, among other things, invented early devices for third-rail electric railway use. It appears that RWF is hoping to construct a park adjacent to their site and make this streetcar body a feature of the park.

Holiday in Rockwood

Many thanks to Jordan Helzer, who alerted me to this blog post from last week, and to Gord McOuat of the Halton County Radial Railway, who filled me in on the details. Long story short, Hillcrest Shop in Toronto is going to be renovated, so the TTC is short of space. During the five years this work is expected to take, the historic fleet of six cars will be taking a vacation to HCRR out in Rockwood.

The first two cars to move out to HCRR were Peter Witt 2766, shown above in a photo dating to 2020, and PCC 4500. These were soon followed, between last week and this week, by PCC 4549, CLRV 4081, and CLRV 4001, which was due to be moved out to Rockwood earlier today. That leaves only ALRV 4207, which requires specialized trucking arrangements and is due to move in a couple of weeks.

I'm not certain whether the cars will see any revenue service during their time in Rockwood; they may at least get operated occasionally to keep them exercised. All are said to be operational except for 4081 and perhaps 4207, though even those are complete and in good shape. The long-term plan for the historic fleet is a bit uncertain because the TTC is no longer set up for trolley pole operation, only pantograph operation. The stated goal is to mount pantographs on these cars, or at least on some of them, once they return to Toronto.

In the meantime, I've updated their status to list HCRR as their location along with a notation that they're on loan from the TTC (the exception being 4207, since for the moment it's still in Toronto). For its part, HCRR is up to 59 cars on the PNAERC roster (including 10 CLRVs!), but that's a bit misleading; besides the five TTC cars now on the property, there are also two CLRVs being held for the American Industrial Mining Company Museum and a third that was owned by Seashore until it was given to HCRR a year ago.

Finally, on a totally different subject, this article showed up online about a streetcar body in a closed Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. The car body is not on the PNAERC list (at least not yet!) because until very recently, I didn't have any information on it. It now appears that the car is a Dallas Railway & Terminal 111-115 series double-truck Birney, originally built for Texas Interurban Railway (their 100-104 series) by American in 1922. It arrived at the restaurant in Columbus in 1977. The car is due to be demolished within days or weeks if a buyer can't be found, so I'm holding off on adding it to PNAERC until it's apparent whether the car is really "preserved."