Electromobile under restoration

A post on the Railway Preservation News "Interchange" here shows that Scranton Transit 505, the only remaining Osgood-Bradley "Electromobile," is now the focus of serious restoration work. Fundraising for this project has been going on for a few years and within the past year or so the car's shell was moved off-site and is now having significant steel work done. This is being accomplished in part by using components from Queensborough Bridge Railway 601, another "Electromobile," which was scrapped at the Trolley Museum of New York back in March 2009. That car had deteriorated badly but many components were salvaged for the Scranton 505 project.

With this project underway, Electric City Trolley Museum has the distinction of owning two Scranton streetcars that are being restored at the same time. Scranton 324, a modernized 1903 Brill car, has also seen a remarkable transformation from a tired carbody and last I heard was at the point of having interior and mechanical work done.

Mystery MUs in Maryland

For today I've got a couple of mystery cars. There's a pair of Reading MU cars stored on a siding on the south side of Chestertown, Maryland, a small town on the eastern shore due practically straight east from Baltimore across Chesapeake Bay. The cars are located on an ex-Pennsy branch next to what looks like an old grain warehouse.

2008 photo from Google Maps

Unfortunately I don't have any car numbers on these two. They appear to have had air conditioners mounted in them, suggesting that they *might* be more refugees from the ill-fated motel in Pennsylvania, but I'm not certain of that. But I read somewhere online that one of these two is the only surviving motor car of a sub-series of Reading motor-trailer sets. That suggests it has Commonwealth trucks and has (or had) four motors rather than the Taylor trucks and two motors of the majority of the Reading MU fleet. This photo supports that claim - but I still don't have car numbers nor, for that matter, do I know who owns these cars. Help!

Muni F-Line fleet rebuild update

A new post on the Market Street Railway Association site has information on the current state of the latest Muni rebuilding program. This current contract is with Brookville Equipment in Pennsylvania, which did extensive work on the 11 PCC cars acquired from Newark a few years back. Now Brookville is overhauling the "original" (at least, original preservation era) F-Line fleet of PCC cars that was put into service back in 1995.

According to the post, cars 1056 and 1051 have completed their overhaul and been returned to San Francisco while cars 1055, 1059, 1060, 1062, and 1063 are currently out east being rebuilt. Both cars completed thus far have remained in their previous liveries, though car 1051 has been newly dedicated to the late Harvey Milk as well.

One thing I'm not sure of is how extensive this rebuilding is: whether the cars overhauled have received new or different motors and control or whether their original equipment has been refurbished. For the moment, the mechanical info listed for these cars in PNAERC has remained unchanged.

Lafayette Birney preserved

Today's update to the database is an addition: the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville has added the body of a Birney from Lafayette, Indiana to its collection. Right now it's stored tarped on the museum's property. The car's number is unknown, unfortunately, but Lafayette only owned two groups of Birneys and both were built by Brill in 1922 - so at least this car's history can be narrowed down pretty closely.

One thing I'm not sure of is exactly when ITM acquired this car. It was apparently just in the last couple of years and may have been as recently as earlier this year. It's interesting that the museum acquired it at all; ITM hasn't operated any electric cars since the late 1990s and there hasn't been much restoration work done on electric equipment at the museum in some 15 years. But the acquisition of this car, which would obviously be a very expensive and involved restoration project, suggests that ITM management has not given up on the goal of preserving Indiana's traction history.

MU car at Carthage Knightstown & Shirley sold

Today's news comes from Robert Macdowell of the Southern Michigan Railroad, a diesel-hauled tourist line in rural southeast Michigan which already owns a pair of South Shore interurban cars. Penn Central car 1291 (former New York Central 4331, built by Standard Steel in 1929) has been acquired by the SMRR from the Carthage Knightstown & Shirley. The CK&S, which curtailed operations a couple of years ago I believe, is a small diesel-hauled tourist line in east-central Indiana.

Car 1291 is really pretty historic. The NYC had a sizable fleet of MU cars that ran north from Grand Central Terminal starting in the first decade of the 20th century. None of the first generation cars was preserved but three 1920s-era heavyweight cars were saved. However the other two, currently stored on the Toledo Lake Erie & Western in northeastern Ohio, had all of their electric equipment stripped off. Of the pre-lightweight-era NYC MU fleet, only car 1291 is complete and original. The Southern Michigan is aware of its historical value and, judging by the relatively intact state in which their South Shore cars have been kept, it's likely that car 1291 will remain an intact artifact.

Pullman order numbers

A website I'd never visited before was pointed out to me today: www.ericsrailroadcarhistory.com, which along with quite a bit of astonishingly detailed freight and passenger car history articles, includes - as of October - a Pullman passenger car order list starting in 1912. This is a fascinating document, as it includes all electric passenger cars built by Pullman during that period as well as mainline passenger cars. I've used it to go through and add order numbers, where they were missing, to the PNAERC list. I also discovered that I had mistakenly listed a number of Pullman-built Lackawanna MU cars as having been built in 1920 when in fact they were part of the 1917 batch of "high roof" cars.

So this increases the number of car builders for whom I've come across relatively complete order lists. A gold mine for this type of information is streetcars.telcen.com, Harold Cox's site, which features order lists for ACF, American, Brill, CCF, Cincinnati, Kuhlman, and Laconia among others. An order list for St. Louis Car Company has also been published. However there are still several prominent builders - including McGuire-Cummings, Ottawa, Stephenson, and Wason - for which I've never seen an order list. Anyone know of one in print for these companies?

East Side Railway 1455

Today's change for the roster was to add ownership history information for East Side Railway 1455, a standard McGuire-Cummings snow sweeper owned by the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society. Previously there was no real ownership history for this car, but it turns out their website has some good info on its revenue service history. The only unknown date left is when it was acquired by OERHS from the City of Portland.

East Troy updates

I was able to visit the East Troy Electric Railroad this past weekend for the first time in some years (see the Hicks Car Works blog for a full report) and this visit resulted in some updates and corrections to the PNAERC roster. First, I was able to update the status of several cars, including South Shore cars like car 33 - acquired from the National Park Service in 2010 - which have been put into service. Additionally, I confirmed that South Shore car 21, which had been largely stripped for parts and was in use as a storeroom and office when I was last at East Troy some 15 years ago, was parted out and scrapped. The car was in poor condition when acquired by East Troy in the 1990s and its roof had further deteriorated, so it made sense given the presence of another ten South Shore cars also on the property (some 20% of the railroad's entire passenger fleet!).

And finally, I had the chance to inspect Twin Cities Rapid Transit car 1583 and update some of its mechanical info. Acquired back in the 1970s by the Wisconsin Trolley Museum (ancestor to ETER) as a body, the car is now confirmed to be fitted with Boston Blue Line trucks and motors. Its controllers are a mystery; though "Type 25LB" is cast into their tops, along with some wording in French that betrays their Belgian origin, I have no idea what company may have manufactured them. Help? The car also has an air compressor that resembles a GE CP-something-or-other but was actually manufactured by SEM, another Belgian company. So that pump is currently listed as simply an "SEM" though if I can figure out what CP-type pump it resembles that may change.

El Paso PCC update

Today's update involves six of the surviving PCC cars listed under the Paso del Norte Streetcar Preservation Society. According to the Trolleyville Times at George Huckaby's trolleyville.com website, the list of cars being remanufactured at Brookville (a list I've been trying to hunt down for some months) is 1504, 1506, 1511, 1512, 1514, and 1515. All six have been on the PNAERC list for years, included among the cars stored derelict at the El Paso airport. I'm not certain what the timeline for completion of these cars is, but for the moment their location has been updated to Pennsylvania.

However that's not the end of the story, and at the moment I'm afraid I don't have the end of the story. I'd be very interested in more information on two fronts. First, are these cars still considered part of the PdNSPS collection? Since they're going to be part of a transit agency-run heritage line, I wonder. Second, I've read that they're going to be rebuilt with newer-style control (and possibly motors and brakes) in place of their original XD323 controllers and air-electric brakes. Any information on what exactly they're being rebuilt with would be very helpful.

PCC restoration complete in St. Louis

As noted on our sister Hicks Car Works blog, this summer the restoration of St. Louis Public Service 1743 was completed (or, at least, substantially completed) by Museum of Transportation volunteers. The car's status on the PNAERC list has been updated from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally" although it may be in more regular use, I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, this is the only car currently in service in SLPS livery anywhere, despite there being a sizable number of ex-SLPS PCC cars still in existence owing to their service into the 1980s in San Francisco.

Addition and transfers

First off for today, San Diego LRV 1001 - the class car of that city's first order for modern LRVs for its first light rail line in the early 1980s - has been added to the list. The car has been designated for preservation by the San Diego system and has been assigned to the San Diego Vintage Trolley historic fleet there. This makes car 1001 the fifth car of its type to be preserved; there are two more in Rio Vista, one at Orange Empire and one out east at Rockhill Trolley Museum.

I also updated a couple of the Lackawanna MU cars that were already on the roster. A 2014 photo of car 3607, one of the 1930 motor cars, came to my attention showing that the car has been sold by the Everett Railroad in Pennsylvania to the Durbin & Greenbriar Valley (though lettered for West Virginia Central, a subsidiary of the D&GV) in West Virginia. It was on the Everett in 2005 but I'm not sure exactly when it went to West Virginia; anyone have an exact date? This is one of the ex-Knox & Kane cars, most of which were sold to Heber Valley in Utah where they are currently in use.

And finally, club car 2454's ownership was changed to the Whippany Railway Museum. This had already been listed in the car's notes, as it was formally donated to WRM by former owner United Railroad Historical Society in 2014, but I hadn't changed the owner in the database since the car hadn't left Boonton. However the car is currently undergoing restoration at Star Trak in Boonton on behalf of Whippany so I figured I may as well correct and update the car's owner. This ought to be a very impressive restoration when it's done; these Lackawanna club cars were very distinct pieces.

South Shore trailers scrapped

Robert MacDowell from the Southern Michigan Railway e-mailed me to confirm that the two South Shore interurban trailers in French Lick, Indiana at the Indiana Railway Museum have indeed been scrapped. The cars in question were 204 and 206, built by Pullman in 1927 and lengthened by the South Shore later in life. These were the only two electric cars owned by "the other IRM" so it's no longer a current owner on the PNAERC list. The number of surviving South Shore 200-series coach trailers is thus reduced from four to two, with one at East Troy and one stored in rough shape in Noblesville, Indiana still extant.

In happier news, I've also updated Hot Spring Street Railway 50 at the Fort Smith Trolley Museum. It's no longer "undergoing restoration" but is now in regular service, having been formally dedicated back in May (I was obviously a little slow on the uptake on this one). The restoration took 16 years and involved rebuilding the car from a body, always an impressive accomplishment.

Newly operational cars

This past weekend I was at the Illinois Railway Museum for the museum's annual Members Day operations and there was some equipment that ran for the first time at the museum and/or for the first time in many years. Milwaukee streetcar 972 operated for the first time since 1999 and the first time in revenue service since perhaps 1978. Chicago elevated gate car 24, which is nearing the end of a complete restoration which includes back-dating to its 1914 condition, operated as a motor for the first time since it suffered a motor flash-over while operating to IRM under power over the North Shore Line in 1958 (it was used as a control trailer during the 1970s though). And the first public operation of Illinois Central "Highliner" double-deck MU cars took place with cars 1630 and 1637 making a few short demonstration trips. I suspect that this is the first-ever museum operation of a double-deck electric car in this country - though only if you exclude European cars that have been imported.

Another CTA car added

The latest addition to the blog is CTA 2347, a 1969 Budd-built 2200-series car that was discovered to be in storage in Fairfield, Ohio. It's owned by Jungle Jim's International Market, which seems like a pretty odd place judging from the website. They bought it in 2014 but apparently haven't put it to use in any capacity, as it's currently stored at an RV lot just a block up the road. You can see it on an aerial photo here. Cars like this are only kind of preserved, but it appears to be intact (rather than hollowed out in some way) so for the moment at least it's on the list.

Miscellaneous changes

There haven't been any major changes recently, but a few minor ones have been made relating to restoration progress at a couple of different museums. First, National Capital has released a photo of single-trucker 522, which has recently been cosmetically restored. More information can be found here. It had been on a Brill 21E (modified for rail grinding use) but Baltimore Streetcar Museum traded them a correct older-type Lord Baltimore truck for the car. In turn, car 4662 at BSM is supposed to have a Brill 21 but had been placed on a Lord Baltimore shop truck many decades ago. I'm not positive whether 4662 will receive 522's Brill 21 (confused yet?) but I suspect that it will get some sort of 21 truck.

And in other news, the Illinois Railway Museum has gotten "L" car 24 running for the first time since 1958. See here for photos. The car had formerly been listed on PNAERC as Chicago Rapid Transit 1024 but the restoration project which is now in its later stages has backdated the car to its earlier owner and number, Northwestern Elevated Railroad 24.

IC "Highliners" added

I've added a total of fourteen (!) recently-preserved "Highliner" double-deck MU cars from the Illinois Central's Chicago suburban electrification to the roster. Of those, ten have been acquired by the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas for use as classroom cars. They were moved to Texas in early 2016 and are currently in storage, though I'm not certain whether they're at the Frisco site or stored somewhere nearby. The other four cars were acquired in mid-2015 by the Illinois Railway Museum, which intends to retain two and scrap the others for parts. Which ones will be kept has not yet been determined, and for the time being all four are stored on the IRM campus. As of a couple of weeks ago, work had begun on inspecting these cars and making them operational. Car 1534 was the first to be inspected and had the honor of becoming the first "Highliner" to run in preservation (as far as I know, though there are some in Boone that are potential runners).

CTA "High performance car" acquired by Seashore

Today's news involves a new acquisition of an old car. Chicago Transit Authority car number 1, which for many years has been stored moribund on the property of General Electric in Erie, PA, was recently purchased by the Seashore Trolley Museum. Today it arrived at Kennebunkport courtesy of Silk Road Transportation. This car is the last of the "high performance" 6000-series cars that the CTA owned, a sub-group of eight cars (four single units and two married pairs) that received modifications for high speed operation. It was sold to GE in the 1970s for use as a test car and was later fitted with more modern control equipment, but the body is largely unchanged from its later Skokie Swift configuration, complete with rooftop bow trolleys. The car will need quite a bit of work but it's a unique artifact and it's commendable that Seashore has stepped up to see it preserved.

Missing MU car

Today's "mystery car" is one of the many Lackawanna MU cars that have found their way into preservation. In this case, I'm wondering about car 4308 (Pullman, 1920) which was last seen at the Michigan Air-Line Railway in Walled Lake, MI northwest of Detroit in 2010. Supposedly the car was sold around that time via Ozark Mountain but I have been unable to figure out who bought it or where it went. As always, information is much appreciated.

12/6/2023 UPDATE: This website has a roster of Michigan Air-Line that says car 4308 was never used in service, but rather was a parts source, and was scrapped in 2010. Since that fits with the (scant) information I've been able to dig up, I'm going to say this mystery is solved and the car has been scrapped.

AEM7 preserved, shuffling in San Diego

It's not exactly "news" that the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania acquired an Amtrak AEM7 - it was just about a year ago that it happened - but I have now gotten around to having the PNAERC list reflect that. Amtrak 915 is now included, though I'm still short some technical data on its control, brakes and motors.

And in other news, I've updated the status of several electric cars in San Diego that have been shuffled around. "California car" 54 was acquired by the San Diego Electric Railway Association last year and moved from Balboa Park to their National City site, where it is now stored next to the depot there. SDERA also acquired an ex-St. Louis, ex-Muni PCC which had originally been slated for rebuilding and use on the San Diego Vintage Trolley heritage operation. As for SDVT, it has lost the aforementioned car but gained ex-Newark 10 which was rebuilt out east and is already in service painted up as car 530. Another ex-St. Louis car was already assigned the number 530, so I'm not sure what the plans for that car are at the moment. There are also two ex-Philadelphia PCC cars on hand which I believe are intended for rebuilding and use in the SDVT operation.

Today's "mystery cars"

During the ongoing project of going through and double-checking all of the listings, I've been coming across some "mystery cars" - in this case, equipment that I know was around until recently but which I've managed to lose track of.

Today I'm looking for information on two of the three Pittsburgh PCC cars that until 2013 or so were at Power Superconductor in New Castle, PA. The cars in question are Pittsburgh PAT 1734 and 1773, both 1949 St. Louis cars. The former car, 1734, was donated to the Youngstown Steel Heritage Museum in 2013 but I haven't been able to find any evidence that it was moved. The other car, 1773, I can't find any information on at all.

UPDATE 3/2019: It turns out that car 1734 has been moved to Ellwood City, PA by the owner of the company in New Castle for restoration. It's also been confirmed that 1773 was scrapped for parts. Click here for more details.

A third car, 1705, was acquired by Midwest Electric Railway Museum in Mount Pleasant, IA and was moved there in 2013; I believe it's currently in storage.

First blog post

As I write this post, the new and improved PNAERC site is in beta test mode. The site's webmaster, Jeff Hakner, has completely redesigned the backend of the site and from now on we will be able to make changes to any listing at any time. I am going through and correcting any data that got mangled during the data transfer, after which I will be going back through the blog again to update and correct photo and video links.

I'm also making changes and updates, which going forward will be the raison d'etre for this blog. Today I added two recently-preserved cars to the list, both Duewag U2 LRV's from San Diego. Car 1017 was acquired earlier this year by the Western Railway Museum while car 1008 was acquired by Orange Empire. Both have been added to the PNAERC list, joining cars 1018 and 1019 which were already there.

Help needed: I am still looking for mechanical information on these San Diego U2 cars to fill in the gaps, so any assistance with this is appreciated!