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?