News Roundup

Unusually enough, there's news today from a few different directions, and on a few different topics.

First off, thanks to Bill Wall for passing along the news that Seashore has again updated their "re-homing list."

Most of the cars on it are the same as the last edition, but there are three new additions that the museum has decided to deaccession. The first, pictured above in a photo taken way back in 1998, is Knoxville Power & Light 410. This is a single-truck curve-side car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and retired in 1939. It's a body, of course, and is in rough shape if the 28-year-old photo is any indication. This car is a bit odd in that it's simultaneously rare and, yet, not rare. There are only six Cincinnati curve-side cars in existence, however three of them are Knoxville single-truck bodies identical to car 410. And the other two are in much better condition than car 410: car 416 has been fully (albeit non-operationally) restored in its hometown, while car 419 is unrestored but preserved in solid condition at IRM as a body.

The other two additions to the re-homing list are true oddballs on the PNAERC list. They're both diminutive rail grinders built in 1913 by the Goldschmidt Thermit Company for the Boston Elevated Railway. Above is MBTA 0517, which has certainly seen better days.

And here's MBTA 3234 (both of these photos were taken within the past few months and were printed in the new re-homing list). I'll confess, I recall seeing these cars sitting off on a siding at Seashore for many years but not until now did I know which one was which! Anyway, there was a time that small, purpose-built rail grinders like this were not uncommon on street railways. They're exceedingly rare now, though; my best guess is that they were just exceedingly uninteresting to the fans running the trolley museums back in the 1950s. Most surviving rail grinders were rebuilt from streetcars or, at the very least, had interesting car bodies. Besides these two, I think the only rail grinder of this general outline on the PNAERC list is the Kerwin-built example preserved in Mexico City.

There are now a total of 34 cars at Seashore on the PNAERC roster that have been deaccessioned, offered to other organizations, or designated for disposal. That's about 18% of their traction collection.

And now, let's proceed a few miles to the southwest and visit another one of the "three sisters," the Connecticut Trolley Museum.

The news from CTM is the precise opposite of the news from Seashore: in this case, a car is being re-accessioned. The car in question is Long Island Rail Road 4153, an MP54A1 commuter car built by AC&F in 1930. Way back in 2018, CTM deaccessioned this car and made it available to other organizations. It hasn't found a taker. However, the museum has now elected to retain it for their historic collection after all. This is good from an historical standpoint because there are very few MP54's still remaining in anything resembling original condition; in fact, I'd say there are only two, this car and sister car 1149 in Syracuse (and I don't know how complete that car is). I'm also pretty sure 4153 is the most recent MP54 to operate, as it did run at CTM during the 1970s, and maybe more recently. Many thanks to [correction!] Andy Borst of CTM for letting me know about 4153's status change.

And finally, a few more miles to the southwest, some disconcerting news comes tonight from our friends at the Rockhill Trolley Museum. They've announced on their Facebook page (full text of the announcement is below, for the record) that they have lost the use of their railroad except on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons. The other four days of the week, and the mornings of these three days, their line has been requisitioned by the East Broad Top for use by a railbike operation.

The EBT has always owned the land under RTM's railroad, but for some 60 years the two organizations have operated side-by-side in what has seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement. I'm not sure exactly what to extrapolate from this news, but I hope that the EBT finds somewhere else to put their railbikes and that they return to the past state of equilibrium with the trolley museum.

Announcement text:

Rockhill Trolley Museum would like to extend a sincere apology to our valued visitors for an upcoming change to our operating schedule.

Beginning July 1, 2026, East Broad Top Railroad will be operating standard-gauge rail bikes on our trolley line Monday through Thursday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and Friday through Sunday from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM.

Due to the change being out of our control, we are required to limit trolley rides to Friday through Sunday with departures at: 12:45 PM, 2:00 PM, 3:15 PM, and 4:30 PM. Museum store hours are being finalized and will be announced as soon as they are updated.

Purchasing trolley tickets can still be done in our museum store or online at rockhilltrolley.org and are valid for unlimited rides on the date they are redeemed. Please note our tickets are no longer available through East Broad Top Railroad at the station or online.

We understand schedule changes can be disappointing, and we sincerely regret any inconveniences. Your continued support is greatly appreciated as our volunteers continue to provide a welcoming and educational visitor experience. We look forward to seeing you this season!

South Shore 32 Scrapped

In a post today on the Ahead of the Torch Facebook group, it was confirmed that Seashore has scrapped South Shore interurban car 32. This is no great loss; of the 40 coaches operated by the CSS&SB between the 1920s and the early 1980s, no fewer than 27 - a full two-thirds - are still in existence, including "flanking" cars 30, 31, 33, and 34. This particular car was in particularly bad condition because its frame was damaged during transportation to Maine. It was deaccessioned by Seashore in 2022 but found no takers; Seashore coordinated with East Troy volunteers to allow that museum to harvest some parts off the car this spring. The Seashore collection, at least on the PNAERC roster, is now down to 185 cars, and the overall roster stands at 2,088 pieces.

Postcard from Canada

I owe a big thank you to our official researcher, Wesley Paulson, who just returned from a visit to the Halton County Radial Railway in Canada and sent several updates and photos to help fill out and update the PNAERC list.

Wesley was able to nab some photos of cars at HCRY that are pictured on the PNAERC roster, but whose images are either poor or outdated. Above is TTC C1, a 1911 derrick, which has deftly evaded most photographers visiting the museum. The only photo I had of this car dated to (I think?) the 1990s.

This single-truck rail grinder, TTC RT7, was rebuilt from a Toronto Civic Railway streetcar. I didn't have any decent photos at all of this car, though that's understandable given that it's not on public display.

Every museum has one or two cars that were disassembled, either in part or in full, for a restoration project that then stalled. TTC 1704, shown here, is awaiting a future restart of a major rebuilding. This car is identical to TTC 1706 at Branford.

Wesley also got some mechanical information I was missing. And above is an "oops," though it's not immediately obvious. TTC 4089 is part of the TTC's historic fleet, all of which are currently stored at HCRY while their carbarn is rebuilt. It's a standard CLRV built in 1979. The "oops" is that until now, it's been listed on the PNAERC list not as 4089 but as 4081. That's been corrected now, though.

Another update was that TTC 4024, a CLRV also built in 1979 and pictured above in 2022, was scrapped last year. This is no particular loss; it was acquired from TTC in 2020 as a parts source. It's now been removed from the PNAERC list, leaving an even dozen CLRVs on the list in addition to two articulated ALRVs.

Finally, speaking of ALRVs, TTC 4207 is part of the TTC historic fleet that's now at HCRY, but until now I hadn't noted it as being at Halton County. That's now been corrected. Thanks again to Wesley for all this helpful information!

Long Island MP54 Scrapped

News comes from Facebook today that Long Island Rail Road 4137, shown above in 2016, has been scrapped at the Seashore Trolley Museum. A lot of equipment was salvaged from the car to benefit cars at other museums, including seats and electrical parts that will go to New Haven "Washboard" MU combines preserved in Danbury.

Photo posted 5/28/2026 on Ahead of the Torch

Car 4137 was an MP-54A1 third-rail commuter coach built by AC&F in 1930 as LIRR 1137. It was retired in 1972 and sold to Seashore, so it's been in Kennebunkport for longer than it was in service. The car never ran at Seashore, though, and over the past decade or two its condition had deteriorated markedly. It was offered to other organizations for preservation back in 2022 but found no takers.

This reduces the number of LIRR cars on the PNAERC list to four, but of those, one is a "tunneled" static display piece and a second has been deaccessioned by its owner. The only LIRR MP-54 that seems to be in solid condition is car 1149, on display at the fairgrounds in Syracuse. (There's also unusual double-deck trailer 200, preserved on Long Island.) MP-54s have not fared well in preservation; they seem particularly prone to rusting out, and their size and unsuitability for operation has meant they've rarely found homes except as "stripped" coaches on tourist railroads. There are 12 MP-54s on the PNAERC list when ex-PRR examples are included, but besides the three LIRR examples listed above, three are hulks due to be scrapped, five have been stripped of their electrical equipment and turned into tourist railroad coaches, and the remaining car is stored outdoors in rough shape.

Seashore's collection on the PNAERC list is now 186 pieces, and there are 2,090 cars on the list in total.

Even More 'L' Cars

We'll forgive you if you're getting a bit of 'L' car fatigue, but I've been notified that another pair of Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit cars has been preserved. This time it's CTA 2401 and 2402, the first pair of 2400-series cars built by Boeing-Vertol in 1976. They're shown above in an October 1976 photo from here. Unfortunately, I can't find any recent photos of them, nor is there any information about them online other than a statement on the CTA's heritage fleet page about having an eight-car train of 2400s. These cars are generally identical to the other six 2400s kept by the CTA for preservation except that they were part of a subset of these cars that were rebuilt in 1995 for use pulling work equipment such as flat cars. Their grids and control groups were beefed up, they had sockets added for jumpers, and they acquired red-and-white strips in place of the more typical red/white/blue stripes, but those were about the only modifications. Of the 10 cars of this type on the PNAERC roster, these are the only two that received work-motor modifications. This increases the CTA historic fleet to 18 cars: eight 2400s, four 2200s, four 6000s, and two 4000s.

The IRM 'L' Car Fleet Grows

A pair of new - and in this case, "new" means "42-year-old" - rapid transit cars arrived at the Illinois Railway Museum on Friday, fresh from the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA cars 2871 and 2872, a married-pair set, are 2600-series cars built in 1984 by Budd. This was one of the last orders for railway cars built by Budd, and in fact the last cars of this order were also the last rapid transit cars ever completed by the Philadelphia car builder. This particular pair went into service a couple of years before that and were just retired, making them the newest CTA cars in preservation. Many cars of this series are still in service, and with deliveries of new 7000-series cars having slowed to a trickle, some of the remaining 2600s may be in revenue service for a while yet.

With these new arrivals, the IRM collection listed on PNAERC has grown to 147 cars - second only to Seashore in quantity - of which 42 are rapid transit cars. Cars 2871-2872 are the first electric cars acquired by IRM in six and a half years, which I believe is the longest such "drought" in the museum's history. On average, IRM has acquired two electric cars per year, every year, for its entire 73-years history. (And to be fair, the museum has been adding railroad and rubber-tired equipment to its fleet at a steady clip during these last few years.) The PNAERC list overall now stands at 2,089 pieces.

SEPTA Spam Cans to South Elgin

A post today on Facebook revealed that SEPTA 476 and 477, the pair of ex-Chicago Transit Authority 6000-series 'L' cars at the Middletown & Hummelstown, have left the M&H and are headed to the Fox River Trolley Museum.

CTA 6000s are not exactly an endangered species. Besides this set, another seven married pairs (plus half of another pair) are known to exist, and that's not counting another five pairs in Windber that may have already been scrapped. There are also another nine single-unit variants still around, three of which are at FRTM. But cars 476-477 are slightly interesting. Built by St. Louis Car Company in 1951 as CTA 6069-6070, they are the oldest 6000s still in existence, at least going by car number. They're part of the first 200 cars of this type ordered by the CTA - a subtype nicknamed "flat-door" cars for their most obvious distinguishing feature - so these cars weren't built using components from scrapped PCC streetcars like the later 6000s were.

This pair was part of a group of flat-door 6000s sold in 1987 to SEPTA, which was experiencing a critical car shortage on the ex-Red Arrow third-rail line to Norristown due to wrecks and reliability problems with the 1920s- and 1930s-vintage Strafford cars and Bullet cars. Though far from ideal for service on the Norristown line, the 6000s saw use until the new N-5* cars were delivered in the early 1990s. This pair was bought by the M&H in 1994, apparently with the idea of scrapping the bodies and placing the trucks under the SEPTA PCC streetcars that arrived at the same time as a way of standard-gauging them, but that never happened. Cars 476 and 477 sat in the yard in Middletown, usually separated from each other, for a bit over 30 years.

For FRTM, this is a bit of an unexpected acquisition. Nine years ago they got rid of CTA 6101-6102, a pair from this same order that had been backdated by the CTA prior to retirement. The museum has also been focusing more on extending its barn than on growing its collection; they've scrapped or sold five cars in the last five or six years, by my count, and I believe 476-477 are the first electric cars they've acquired since the Trolleyville dispersal back in 2010 (correction: thanks to Bill Wall, who reminds me that just recently they received the Rio open car that had been owned by Wendell Dillinger!). Their roster on PNAERC now stands at 20 cars, with "spam cans" comprising a full 25% of the total. FRTM now joins IRM, Seashore, Craggy Mountain Line, and the CTA itself in the ranks of married-pair 6000 owners.

For its part, the M&H is continuing to pare down its traction collection. Other than Lackawanna MU cars, and the Rio open car they plan to keep that isn't on the PNAERC roster, they're now down to just five pieces: Red Arrow 77, supposedly intended to stay in Middletown; SEPTA 2104; KCPS 2; BRT 4550; and SBK 9425.

*Thanks to Bill Wulfert for the correction