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.

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

Trenton Sweeper Moves

Thanks to Bill Wall and Wesley Paulson for sending me updates of recent news on the last surviving piece of equipment from the Trenton & Mercer County, New Jersey Transit 5246, a snow sweeper built by Russell in 1921.

Today, the sweeper was moved from its recent storage location at the Bloomfield NJT light rail shops to Titusville, NJ (above photo by Bill Wall). There, its new owner, Liberty Historic Railway, has an indoor storage location arranged for it (I'm not clear on why the sweeper has been boat-wrapped - I guess extra insurance?). This piece of equipment has had quite the tumultuous couple of decades. I'm not sure when it was last used by NJT, or when it last ran, but in 2011 it was moved from the Newark subway system to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum for storage. It remained there until 2020, when it went back to NJT and was stored outside at the Bloomfield facility. As far as I know, it's been owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society during this period, but it is now owned by LHR. As the last surviving T&MC piece of equipment, it's quite historically significant.

Its condition is, shall we say, unusual. That's because it's really "a tale of two sweepers" in a single car body. The photos above and below were posted a week ago by NJERHS. The first two photos show one end of 5246, looking like it's almost ready to "put the pole up and go," as they say...

...and then there's the other end of the sweeper, where the roof has failed and partially caved in, among other structural issues. We've all seen cars where a leak in one spot caused localized deterioration, but I don't think I've ever seen quite such a night-and-day difference between two ends of the same car as here. I assume that half of it was tarped and half wasn't, or maybe one end was under a downspout off a building or something. Anyway, LHR has their work cut out for them. That group is back up to two cars on the PNAERC list, while NJT itself is down to one car, PSCT 28 - but I'm actually not certain who owns that car, and it's not on NJT property, it's a "gate guardian" at the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway.

Seashore Re-Homing List Update

The latest Seashore Trolley Museum "re-homing list" update has dropped, and it adds a handful of cars to the various pieces still hanging out on the list from previous editions of the list.

The most significant addition to the list is Harrisburg Railways 811, shown above in a 2016 photo. One of two Harrisburg streetcars in existence, this double-truck, arch-roof semi-convertible was built by Brill in 1918. It's of generally similar design to the other extant Harrisburg car, 1914-vintage car 710, but has steel sides. As can be seen, it also has some serious structural issues. It's the only car of its series in existence, so it's technically unique, but it's not remarkably historic.

Another addition to the re-homing list is Cleveland Transit System 113, a "Bluebird" PCC rapid transit car built in 1958 by St. Louis. This car hasn't been included in Seashore's published re-homing lists, but it was deaccessioned a couple of years ago and has been listed on PNAERC as "available for sale" since early 2024. This car is a Trolleyville alumnus, and came to Seashore in 2010 as part of that museum's dissolution. It's one of three single-unit "Bluebirds" in existence, with the other two - car 109, restored and operational, and car 112, which is probably in similar condition to 113 - both at Northern Ohio.

The other new car on the list is MBTA 0579, which isn't on the PNAERC roster. It's a flat car from the Boston 'L' system and is fitted with a small cab for use as a shove platform, but as far as I can tell, it's not electrified. The photo above is from the museum's re-homing document.

There are also quite a few cars on the latest re-homing document that have been carried over from previous editions. Boston Elevated Railway "Cambridge-Dorchester" subway cars 0709, 0749, 0753, and 0754; "main line elevated" cars 0986 and 0996; work motor 0575; and flat car 0503 (not on PNAERC), as well as New York subway car 175 were all added to the list in November 2023. Chicago Transit Authority 1 was added in October 2023, Laconia Street Railway 17 was added in March 2023, and Boston PCC 3037 has been on the list since all the way back in June 2020.

There are a lot of cars that were on previous editions of the re-homing list but are not on the current version, so it's unclear how many might still be available to other museums and how many are now slated for scrapping. Three cars added to the re-homing list in December 2025 are missing, namely MBTA 0997, SEPTA 1018, and Atlantic City 299, as is Staten Island Rapid Transit 366, added to the list in November 2023 alongside the Boston 0700s. Virginia Electric Power 194, Mobile 49, and Boston 3608 were added to the list in March 2023. South Shore 32 and Long Island Rail Road 4137, both added back in July 2022, as well as Boston PCC 3328, added to the re-homing list in 2020, have recently been stripped for parts and are known to be on the short list to be scrapped soon. Other assorted Boston PCCs listed as available back in 2020, including cars 3069, 3174, 3327, 3331, 3338, and 3344, are missing from the latest version of the list.

Finally, a couple of cars that were never included in published "re-homing" lists are slated to leave Kennebunkport. These include Roanoke "Master Unit" 51, transferred to the Roanoke NRHS chapter in 2024 but not yet moved, and SEPTA "Bullet" car 208, which is being stripped for parts prior to scrapping.

Atlanta Streetcar in Limbo

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for pointing me to a Facebook post that contained some unexpected news about Georgia Railway & Power 269: the car has left the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, its home for some 24 years.

Car 269 was built by Cincinnati in 1921 and was used on the line to Duluth, making it the only one of the handful of surviving Atlanta streetcars able to make that claim. As the above photo shows, it's in rough shape and has an end missing, but it's been kept tarped at SERM. However, the car appears to have been sold to a developer called SoDo Atlanta LLC (SoDo = South Downtown). SoDo has removed nearly all the remaining wood from the car, sand-blasted the steel, and moved it into a building at 82 Peachtree Street in the city.

The video on their site says "We imagine the car will become a small restaurant, bar, or unique hospitality experience in the near future." That could go either way; the car could be cosmetically restored as a centerpiece display, like this car or like one of the spaghetti restaurant cars. Or it could end up like this. For the moment, I've updated the car's ownership, but it's still on the PNAERC list. SERM is down to two cars on the list, a MARTA rapid transit car they acquired in 2022 and a second Atlanta streetcar body, Georgia Power 636.