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.