More Muni PCC rebuilding news

The Market Street Railway blog reports more progress by Brookville on the project to rehab Muni's entire "original" F-Market Line fleet of ex-Philadelphia PCC cars. Car 1055, pictured, is now back in San Francisco following completion of rebuilding work in Brookville. It has retained its simplified PTC livery, which it wore in regular service in a previous life in Philadelphia as car 2122. Apparently the next car due back from rebuilding is car 1063, which will remain painted as a Baltimore car but will switch liveries to the earlier Baltimore color scheme of dark blue-green and cream from its recent yellow-and-grey paint job used towards the end of streetcar service in that city.

Mining locomotives added

This is another "catching up" post, but back a couple of months ago I decided to add a pair of Phelps-Dodge mining locomotives to the list of preserved equipment. The problem is, I don't have fleet numbers for them.

Both of them are in Douglas, Arizona outside of the city visitors center at 16th & Pan-American Avenue. Until a year or two ago they were plinthed in a parking lot at 11th & H Avenue but their new home is higher-visibility. The first, pictured here, is one of the homebuilt locomotives that Phelps-Dodge constructed around 1906. Three others exactly like it, fleet numbers 15, 17, and 18, are still around and owned by Old Pueblo Trolley, Arizona Street Railway Museum, and Goldfield Ghost Town respectively. It's now on the PNAERC list here.

The second, pictured here, was (according to the caption at the link) built by Baldwin-Westinghouse in 1918. It looks very similar - but intriguingly, not identical - to Phelps-Dodge 2, currently on display (if only marginally preserved) at Goldfield Ghost Town. It's now on the list here. This locomotive may have Westinghouse HL control, as does number 2, but I just don't know.

I'm very interested in fleet numbers for either of these locomotives, so if anyone is passing through Douglas, I'd appreciate it if you could stop by and scout these out! Also, if you're interested in all of the preserved Phelps-Dodge locomotives, just click here. There aren't all that many industrial electric locomotives on the PNAERC roster - small-gauge mining locomotives, for instance, don't fit into the criteria I've developed - but these Phelps-Dodge locomotives are standard gauge and ran using the same type of overhead as most street railways. Some even had Westinghouse HL control. So they're still pretty interesting even if they never ran alongside 62' interurban cars or deck-roof streetcars.

Seashore equipment updates

As I go along, I try and periodically check on some museums' websites to see whether they've added more roster information to fill in gaps in the PNAERC record. I spent a bit of time perusing the Seashore website and was able to update a few of the MBTA rapid transit cars in their collection. There are two steel "main line elevated cars" that are not accessioned but are kept as parts storage (one shown above), 0986 and 0996, that had dates of acquisition (1996) added; I also added master controller type (CJ129) to 0719 and the assorted other Cambridge-Dorchester cars in the collection.

While I was at it, I also corrected the ownership history of Lynn & Boston Street Railway 3256, a very old open car body owned by Seashore. It turns out the Lynn & Boston was one of the companies that was incorporated into the Boston & Northern in 1901, while the B&N itself was incorporated into Bay State Street Railway in 1911. The car is actually listed as BSSR 3256 on the Seashore website these days - I may change its "primary" owner to BSSR, assuming that's an "official" change - so it presumably lasted at least that long in service. I still don't know when the car was retired from service but then again the Seashore website doesn't list that date, so it may be one of those facts lost to history.

I'm always looking to add random bits of information to fill in gaps in the database, of which there are far too many to count. If you ever see a bit of information - an acquisition date, a prior owner, an unidentified piece of electrical equipment - that is missing, please let me know!

Southwest Missouri 60 photo

Dave Hamley from the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum forwarded me the above photo, from an unknown online source, taken (apparently recently) of Southwest Missouri 60 in operation in Webb City, MO. It's an intriguing photo, particularly since the last I had heard, this car was operating using an on-board gas engine out of an old Corvair to power it. However it now appears that it has this interesting little thing coupled to it.

Anyone know what the arrangement is here? It looks kind of like that might be some sort of remote-control locomotive that is pushing/pulling the electric car. Alternately it could be a more standard tow-along generator powering electric motors under the car. But I simply don't know.

Two freight trailers added to PNAERC roster

So here's another piece of good news: I've managed to identify a pair of cars that have long been on my list of "mystery cars." They're both interurban freight trailers from the Texas Electric that are on the grounds of the Texas State Railroad in Rusk. With help from TE expert John Myers they've been identified as cars 605 and 613 and added to the PNAERC list.

Both have intriguing histories. They both started life as handsome railroad-roof Texas Traction interurban coaches built by St. Louis Car Company in 1907; car 605 was originally TT 6 and 613 was originally TT 7 (a photo of identical car 8 is here). After a few years car 6 was rebuilt by TT into a freight motor and renumbered 554; around the same time car 7 was rebuilt from a straight coach into a coach-RPO car and renumbered 356. TT was incorporated into Texas Electric in 1916 and both 356 and 554 initially kept their numbers. Car 554 was rebuilt in 1918 into its current form as an unpowered interurban freight trailer and renumbered to 605; seven years later, in 1925, car 356 was also rebuilt as a freight trailer. Both would have been retired when TE quit in 1949 and both were retrieved and moved to Rusk in 1996, at the same time freight motor 501 and freight trailer 608 were moved to Van Alstyne and put on display there. Click here for a photo of 605 and click here for a photo of 613.

So the Texas State Railroad's collection of grounded interurban freight equipment has tripled, with the two native freight trailers joining the ex-C&LE freight motor that arrived in Rusk around the late 1990s as well. It's a bit of an odd collection for a steam tourist line but while the cars are all used for storage, they're also being taken care of and do qualify as "preserved" by my standards. Hopefully they are kept up going forward. This also means that there are 10 known pieces of preserved Texas Electric equipment in all: two locomotives (the only complete examples), three passenger cars, two freight motors, and three freight trailers.

Chicago "Matchbox" painted as Jackson, MI car

One of the newest organizations in traction preservation is the Lost Railway Museum of Grass Lake, Michigan. This tiny hamlet is home to two apparently unrelated traction history organizations, LRM and the town historical society. The latter owns the body of a Michigan Electric interurban combine, 29 (identical car 28 is under restoration at the Illinois Railway Museum) while LRM acquired its first car in 2016. This is an ex-Chicago "Matchbox" streetcar, CSL 1137, previously CSL 1288. Car 1137 was on display when LRM opened its new, and fairly impressive, display hall to the public earlier this summer. But there's a twist: the car is in the process of being painted as Michigan United Traction 47, a virtually identical car that once ran in Jackson, MI but is long gone. The Chicago "Matchboxes" were a standard St. Louis Car Company design that was sold to a number of different street railway companies including the systems in both Chicago and Jackson. So car 1137 does make a good stand-in for MUT 47. It remains to be seen how far the restoration of this car progresses. The car's record in PNAERC has been updated to reflect its new identity and status on public display.

Boston car confirmed scrapped

As with the Lackawanna MU car mentioned in the previous post, it's inevitable that cars on the list will get cut up now and again. In fact there are many (I'm thinking of some of the PCC graveyards out there) that are on the list that are truly on borrowed time and stand little chance of ultimate survival, I must admit. However one of my standards is that any electric car owned by a museum or preservation-oriented organization (or even person) goes on the list, even if it's in pretty wretched shape or is slated for disposal.

But then again, most of those cars do end up "going away." It was confirmed for me that Boston center-door car 6309 was parted out by the Seashore Trolley Museum in 2010 and disposed of, so I've finally taken it off of my roster, seven years later. One of three of the big center-door cars at Seashore, 6309 was the newest of the three (built in 1921) and the only Laconia. It was also the only one of the three with K-control, as the other two have MU control (albeit two different types). But it was in really rough shape; rebuilt as a sand car in 1937, it had the usual work service modifications and had suffered the usual poor maintenance before retirement. The photo above was taken in 2000 on my first visit to Seashore. On the bright side, car 6131, one of the museum's other two center-door cars, is now in the Town House restoration shop undergoing intensive rebuilding work to return it to its former glory.

Erie-Lackawanna MU car confirmed scrapped

There are, unfortunately, most likely a number of electric cars included on the PNAERC list that are no longer in existence - they've been scrapped and I just haven't yet found out about it. The problem is identifying which ones these are. Museums aren't typically too loud about scrapping cars, especially when it's something that they had originally hoped to save, and non-preservation-oriented organizations are often unlikely to announce much of anything they're doing.

So it's kind of hit-or-miss, trying to ID cars that might not still be around. One of these "questionables" was Erie-Lackawanna MU car 3589, one of many cars of its type in preservation. Until a couple of years ago it was stored under a bridge near the Station Square development in Pittsburgh, listed under private ownership. But apparently it took some fire damage and I was recently able to confirm that the car was, indeed, scrapped. At least some of the parts were distributed to area museums and tourist railroads to help restore other equipment, so that's a positive. And this wasn't a great loss from an historic standpoint; the car was in poor condition and certainly not unique, nor even rare.

Chicago "L" car progress

I continue to try and catch up with changes made to the PNAERC list during the past several months. One change (well, two changes) involve the Illinois Railway Museum's collection of wooden "L" cars from Chicago. IRM has been progressing through its wooden "L" car collection over the last decade and steadily restoring these formerly dilapidated cars one by one. In late 2016, the eldest of the collection - Northwestern Elevated Railroad 24, formerly listed on PNAERC under a later number, Chicago Rapid Transit 1024 - was outshopped following the completion of a four-year restoration and backdating effort.

The car has also been put into revenue, though not constant, service at the museum. As such, the car's status has been updated from "under restoration" to "operated occasionally." In turn, the next wooden "L" car in line for restoration work has been moved into the shop. This is Chicago Elevated Railway 1754, built by Jewett in 1906. It's something of a technological bridge between the earlier cars like NWERR 24 and later cars like CRT 1797, which was restored from 2010 to 2012. It was also upgraded during the 1920s with newer motors and electric equipment. Car 1754 was acquired by IRM out of work service and in somewhat deteriorated shape, so while it has been operated occasionally during the museum's Trolley Parade events, it's never been usable for passenger service.

Its status has been updated to "undergoing restoration" - and judging by past results, will be updated again to operable status soon enough.

New car added to list - ex-Windsor ON, ex-Staten Island NY

It's not every day that I add a new car to the PNAERC roster, particularly these days, and this one is fairly interesting in that it's old and historically significant. The new addition is Sandwich Windsor & Amherstberg 351 - thanks to Sloan Auchinloss, who sent me this newspaper article about the car's preservation and plans for its possible cosmetic restoration and display in Windsor, Ontario.

Car 351 was built in 1919 by Cincinnati Car Company for the Richmond Light & Railroad Company. You can be excused for thinking that RL&R was in Virginia - I know I hadn't heard of it - but the line was actually on Staten Island in New York City. This makes car 351 (originally RL&R 332) one of only two streetcars from Staten Island still in existence and, arguably, the more complete of the two. Car 332/351 was part of a series of 20 double-truck cars whose design appears to have mimicked pretty closely the standard Public Service of New Jersey car design, right down to the high curve-topped side windows and unusual low deck roof. Around 1927 all 20 cars were sold to the SW&A where they ran until the end of streetcar service around 1939. Car 351 was sold for use as a house but was acquired a couple of years ago by a private owner and moved to the old streetcar barn on University Avenue, which he owns and where the car sits now. The city is trying to come up with a plan to work with the owner on getting the car cosmetically restored and put on display so hopefully those plans come to fruition.

So here's a question: does anyone have any mechanical information on this series of car? Trucks, motors, control, etc?

EDIT: Jeff Hakner has provided some additional information on the history of these cars. According to notes from the Branford files, the 20 cars in this series were built by Cincinnati in 1918 for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, which was organized by the government to assist with war efforts. Supposedly the cars were assembled at the Plank Road Shops of Public Service of New Jersey, which may explain their very PSNJ-esque appearance. The cars were leased to RL&R from 1918 to 1920 at which time they were sold to the RL&R. Pretty interesting stuff!

Livery change on the Market Street line

Muni has been sending its "original" F-Market Line fleet of PCC cars - that is to say, the fleet of 14 cars acquired in 1995 from SEPTA that inaugurated heritage line service on Market Street - back to Brookville a couple at a time for rebuilding. They're receiving completely overhauled electrical and control systems along with some body work and new paint jobs. In some cases these paint jobs are more accurate than their original liveries (compare new 1059 with old 1059) and in some cases they're receiving entirely new color schemes.

Car 1062, which was formerly painted in Louisville Street Railway green, is a recent arrival back from Brookville and it falls into the latter category. It's now painted in traditional Pittsburgh Railways red-and-cream, a livery not previously seen among the F-Line fleet. More information is on the Market Street Railway Association blog at https://www.streetcar.org/pittsburgh-nevada-inbound/

You may note that the photos on the PNAERC site still reflect car 1062's old appearance. We're still working on the coding for photos and videos associated with listings on the new PNAERC site, so until that's done our images are frozen in time. As soon as this coding is in place we'll start going through the listings to fix links and update photos in cases like this.

Another New York subway car runs

It has come to my attention that yet another subway car in the extensive historic collection of the New York City Transit Authority, R-10 subway car 3184, was just recently made operational after a couple of decades out of service. Video:

This is one of two R-10 cars still in existence and is technically owned (as far as I can tell) by Railway Preservation Corporation but is kept at Coney Island Shops along with the rest of the preserved fleet of subway cars, some owned by NYCTA and some owned by RPC. The car was built by ACF in 1948; unfortunately I don't know when it was retired (the majority of the fleet seems to have been retired in 1989 so that's a best guess), nor when exactly RPC purchased it.

Ex-Virginian electric arrives in Illinois

Another piece of news to catch up on is the arrival at the Illinois Railway Museum of ex-Virginian, ex-Norfolk & Western, ex-New Haven, ex-Penn Central, ex-Conrail electric locomotive 4601. For a relatively modern piece of equipment (built 1956 by GE) this beast has had a fairly eventful life. Twelve of these ignitron rectifier locomotives were built for coal hauling on the Virginian electrification, replacing old jack-shaft boxcab electrics dating to the 1920s. When the N&W took over the Virginian in 1959 it changed traffic patterns, assigning mostly trains of empties to the former Virginian main line. With less tonnage to haul the N&W de-electrified the Virginian in 1962 and put the six-year-old ignitron rectifiers, known as class EL-C on the Virginian, up for sale.

The eleven remaining locomotives (one had been rebuilt as a slug and was acquired for parts) were bought by the New Haven in 1963 and moved to Connecticut, where they replaced older 1930s electric locomotives in freight service. Reclassified EF-4, the eleven units were renumbered 300-310. All eleven stayed in service with Penn Central, renumbered 4601-4610 (301 was wrecked about the time of the PC takeover and assigned number 4600 but scrapped about the same time), and later entered service with Conrail with the same road numbers

IRM's unit was in the middle of rebuilding work when Conrail ended electric freight service in March 1983. Rebuilding work was completed but the 4601 was immediately mothballed. Interestingly, this work included replacement of the ignitrons with silicone diode rectifiers. The ten remaining locomotives were stored briefly and then traded in to GE in 1984 (though one, Conrail 4604, was sent to the Virginia Museum of Transportation around this time and restored as Virginian 135 - it may not have been returned to GE). CR 4601 was the subject of a campaign to have it preserved and in 1988 it was transferred - sans transformer and numerous internal components - to the Railroad Museum of New England in Connecticut. It remained there, largely untouched, until acquired by IRM in trade in 2014. It was moved to Altoona in 2015 to be cosmetically restored but the deal to accomplish this fell through and the locomotive was moved to Union in July 2017. The museum intends to repaint the rectifier into New Haven colors which would make it the only New Haven electric locomotive preserved as such.

PCCs for sale

A recent post on RyPN at this link suggests that the owner of Penn Ohio Electric Railway, the private collection of three Pittsburgh PCC cars located near Ashley, Ohio, has put the trio up for sale. Of the three cars, one is an air-electric - car 1639 (built in 1945 and said to be partly disassembled following some uncompleted restoration work), car 1713 (built in 1949 and said to be in rather good condition), and car 1728 (also from 1949 and said to be in poor condition and mainly good as a parts source). All are, of course, Pennsylvania gauge.

CTA 6000s return to Chicago

It appears that today was the day that CTA 6101-6102, the preserved set of 6000-series "spam cans" at the Fox River Trolley Museum, were loaded and transported back home to the Chicago Transit Authority. There they join a pair of 4000s and a handful of buses in the CTA's new "historic collection," a project headed up by Graham Garfield of the CTA. The plan, supposedly, is that Skokie Shops will rebuild (and presumably repaint) the 6101-6102 so that they can be operated for special events, similar to how the 4000s are used. The cars had been sold to FRTM in 1994 with the provision that they could not be operated carrying passengers, and as such had always been on static display at South Elgin. Back with the CTA, they will presumably see use on their home rails and may at some point be joined by more 6000s. Only time will tell on that point.

RIP GRER

It's been quite a while since I wrote a post but I have indeed been updating the new PNAERC site. One of several changes made in recent months is the closing out of listings for the Grand Rapids Electric Railway of Grand Rapids, Ohio. The GRER was the successor to the Waterfront Electric Railway, both of them owned (or at least managed) by Charley Sheets. Starting nearly 20 years ago Charley began downsizing his collection, which at the time was mostly stored inside a barn located in Grand Rapids at the west end of the Toledo Lake Erie & Western tourist railroad. I recall being shown inside the barn around 1998; it was an interesting and fairly eclectic collection at the time.

Most of the collection ended up at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum but one steeplecab went to the local history museum in Sylvania, Ohio and two pieces of equipment remained stored in the barn. These two, a CTA 4000 that underwent some rehab work at some point years ago and a Philadephia double-truck sweeper that had been regauged by the Ohio Railway Museum prior to its sale to GRER, were transferred to the Toledo Lake Erie & Western and GRER has - apparently - ceased to exist. Evidently this transfer actually took place in 2014 but it took me until earlier this year before I realized it. Anyway, the snow sweeper (C-124) is being scrapped with the parts going to Scranton (or so I'm told) while CTA 4439 is being kept around by the TLE&W for some undetermined future use.

I may as well also note that the TLE&W was already on the PNAERC list, as it owns a pair of ex-New York Central heavyweight MU cars as well as an unidentified (and hence not listed) ex-DL&W MU car. Anyone know the number of the Lackawanna MU car on the TLE&W?