Los Angeles LRV to be preserved?

An article posted on Los Angeles Curbed.com suggests that LACMTA 100, the first light rail vehicle built for the new Blue Line to Long Beach back in 1989 when traction returned to the city, is going to be set aside for preservation. The car is a type referred to by LACMTA (Metro) as a P865 and was built in 1989 by Nippon-Sharyo. It's the oldest of the five classes of light rail cars currently in use on the Metro system. According to Trolleyville.com, with new P3010 class cars being delivered, the first of the 1989 cars was sent to scrap in June and retirements are continuing regularly with the goal of retiring the entire original series of cars during the coming year.

If car 100 is indeed preserved by the City of Long Beach as planned, and if any others of this series are likewise preserved by museums, it will be only the third type of light rail vehicle to enter preservation. Earlier types include the infamous Boeing-Vertol LRV, of which a handful of examples remain extant from both operators, Muni and MBTA; and the original 1981 Siemens U2 light rail cars built for San Diego which arguably ushered in the modern era of startup light rail systems, of which a handful have been preserved in California and Pennsylvania. Other early light rail cars, including the 1980 Bredas in Cleveland, the 1983 Tokyu cars in Buffalo, the 1985 Siemens cars in Pittsburgh, and the 1980 "K cars" in Philadelphia (though they're more streetcars than light rail cars), remain in daily service in their respective cities. Thus far I'm not aware that any series of light rail car has been retired without an example being preserved.

Philadelphia PCC cars for sale

News comes from Craigslist, via RyPN, that the six SEPTA PCC cars stored in northeast Philadelphia are for sale. These cars were purchased by an individual in 1996 and for a few years were stored in an empty lot at Swanson & Wolf in South Philadelphia. In 2004 they were moved to the lot in back of the Cuneo Press site on East Erie Avenue, lined up facing the Northeast Corridor where they have been spotted by countless commuters in the decade or so since. During that period the cars have steadily deteriorated; they appear to be in virtually derelict condition at this point. Whether they'll find a taker seems doubtful but remains to be seen. For the time being all cars have been noted as being "for sale."

Reading Blueliners

There are quite a few - thirteen, to be precise - of the old Reading MU cars on the PNAERC list that are, or were, owned by the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society. Most of these I didn't have out-of-service dates or RCT&HS acquisition dates for, but I've uncovered some cryptic references online to 1993 as the year that SEPTA sold these cars off. So I've added that year (noted with a question mark as uncertain) to the ownership histories of these cars.

But I could still use some more information. A few of the Reading cars that weren't rebuilt into 9000-series "Blueliners" are preserved, including one (car 863) owned by the RCT&HS, and I have no idea when that car was acquired by the Society. There are also some cars that were formerly owned by Rail Tours in Jim Thorpe and sold to other railroads, including the Lehigh Gorge Scenic and the California Western, for which I'm missing dates of sale.

Western Railway Museum updates

A visit to the Western Railway Museum this past weekend allowed me to update the status of a number of cars there. I wasn't able to tour the entire museum but I did get a quick tour through the new (well, within the last decade) barn. Construction of this building has allowed a number of cars previously in dead storage to be placed on public display.

Sacramento Northern 62 is now under restoration in the museum's shop. It is having running gear work done and being repainted in authentic white-and-blue colors among other things.

Key System 271, the museum's first car, is also undergoing restoration. It is having its platforms rebuilt.

Salt Lake Garfield & Western 306, an open trailer from the Saltair route, is now on public display rather than in storage.

Pacific Electric 457 is also now on public display.

Richmond Shipyard Railway 563 has been cosmetically restored and is on public display alongside sister car 561.

Interurban Electric Railway 602 has been put on trucks and placed on public display.

Kennecott Copper 700, formerly stored outside in an out-of-the-way location, is now on public display in the new barn.

Kennecott Copper 771 was formerly listed as "stored operable" but has been changed to "inoperable" due to some vandalism that has damaged the unit's control equipment.

Sacramento Northern 1019 has been placed on public display.

Portland Traction 4001 has been changed to "operated often" as its restoration has been completed and the car has been put into regular service.

Notes from Mexico

Google Street View is a wonderful thing. It has helped me considerably in figuring out the locations of certain pieces of equipment, particularly cars and locomotives that are plinthed in public locations. Today I was thinking about Mexico and, going through my list of preserved electric equipment in that country, realized that there were a couple of significant questions. The first involved one of the four preserved Mexicano mainline boxcab locomotives, 1012. Fortunately this one I was able to figure out with the help of Google Street View and this web page.

Formerly I'd had 1012 listed as being in Veracruz, but it turns out it wasn't in the city of Veracruz at all, it was further away elsewhere in Veracruz province (ah, the language barrier). It's plinthed in a town called Ciudad Mendoza, right at the spot where the new and old railroad alignments heading towards Mexico City diverge. And lo and behold, it's plainly visible on Street View in all of its vandalized glory. So 1012's record has been corrected and Ciudad Mendoza added to the list of owners of preserved electric equipment.

And while I was at it, I located another locomotive from this same series plinthed in Orizaba, the next city up the line from Mendoza. Mexicano 1002 is plinthed along the main drag there and if you play with Street View a little you can actually read the plaque next to the locomotive, which states that it was put in that location in 1975. More information for the roster!

So that leaves only one big question mark in Mexico: Veracruz streetcar 15, a single-truck open car similar to the others from that system preserved hither and yon, which is supposed to be plinthed in a place called Villahermosa in Veracruz province. Trouble is, I can't find any record whatsoever that it still exists. It's probably a candidate to be taken off of the roster but does anyone know for sure?

San Diego PCC update

I've updated a few records for PCC cars owned, and formerly owned, by San Diego Vintage Trolley. This has become a bit of a chore given changes in direction and renumberings but I think I've got it down:

Cars in service:
SDVT 529 - ex-SLPS 1716, ex-Muni 1122, acquired 2005, into service 2011
SDVT 530 - ex-TCRT 329, ex-PSCT/NJT 10, acquired 2012, into service 2014

Undergoing rebuild for service on SDVT:
SDVT 531 - ex-PTC/SEPTA 2186, acquired 2009, assigned number 532 until sometime around 2014

Not in service and stored on-site for potential future use on SDVT:
SDVT 533 - ex-PTC/SEPTA 2785, acquired 2010, has not been repainted or renumbered

Cars not in service and stored off-site in the east:
NJT 16 - ex-TCRT 335, acquired 2014
NJT 24 - ex-TCRT 363, acquired 2014

Being stripped for parts by SDVT:
Muni 1123 - ex-SLPS 1728, acquired 2005, assigned number 530 until sometime around 2014, being used as a parts source for SDVT 531

Sold by SDVT to San Diego Electric Railway Association in 2013:
"SDER 539" - ex-SLPS 1777, ex-Muni 1170, acquired by SDVT 2006, assigned number 531 until 2013, at that time was cosmetically restored (in SDER colors) for SDERA and numbered 539

I suppose the initial fleet was going to consist of cars numbered 529-532 (ex-1122, 1123, 1170, and 2186) with 533 (ex-2785) added on about 2010; then in the early 2010s, when ex-Newark cars became available, this changed. Car 529 was finished, 530 made into a parts source and an ex-Newark car assigned number 530, 531 sold, and 532 moved up in the queue and assigned number 531. Car 2785, originally assigned 533, may not receive that number but is apparently in storage intact. I should note that the car sold in 2013 to SDERA has been altered in the roster and listed as Muni 1170 but with a notation that it is lettered SDER 539, a "fictitious" designation as it never wore that number or that livery in service.

A selection of Cleveland streetcars

Looking into Cleveland Railway 0140, the single-trucker preserved at the Henry Ford Museum, got me thinking about preserved streetcars from Cleveland. There aren't very many streetcars from Cleveland still around, but the ones that are still around actually offer a reasonable cross-section of the city's electric railway history. Unlike, say, Los Angeles or Chicago, though, where the majority of the city's preserved streetcars are in one place, the extant Cleveland cars are scattered across the continent.

The oldest is car 0140, a Brill product fairly typical of 1890s single-truckers. It's preserved in Michigan, only a few hours from its home. The second oldest is a rather significant car: Municipal Traction 3334, later Cleveland Railway 934 and eventually Nelson Electric Tramway 23. Its design isn't particularly significant, as it's basically a catalog model Brill semi-convertible (albeit built by Stephenson, by then a Brill subsidiary, and modified several times during its life). But it was built for Municipal Traction, the "three cent line" championed by Cleveland mayor Tom Johnson in his populist fight against Cleveland Railway. An extensive account of this fight can be found here. Municipal Traction used a car numbered 3333 for promotional purposes to highlight its three cent fare and this car was numbered just one higher. Eventually it found its way out to western Canada, where it ran in Nelson and eventually became a grounded body. The Nelson Electric Tramway Society has restored it to operation on their riverfront streetcar line.

The result of Mayor Johnson's campaign for enforced low fares in Cleveland was that the street railway sought to lower its costs on a per-rider basis. This meant bigger cars and motor-trailer trains to reduce manpower requirements. Thus the next-oldest Cleveland cars are the big center-door cars built by Kuhlman in 1914, of which the best example is likely car 1227, restored to original condition by the Seashore Trolley Museum at great expense. It is likely to eventually be paired with matching trailer 2365 from 1917, currently intact but awaiting restoration work. These cars are large for streetcars, about 50' long each, and seat about 60 people (compared with a seating capacity of just 44 for the standard Chicago car around 1910, the "Old Pullman"). Thus in Cleveland in 1920 you could transport 120 seated passengers with a crew of three, whereas in Chicago you'd need twice as many employees and three streetcars to move that many seats.

The next step in Cleveland streetcar progression was the Peter Witt. None of the city's earliest 1915-built examples survive, nor do the later 1920s Kuhlman cars that ran well into the 1950s. But two examples survive that were actually diverted to Cleveland in 1918 from an order placed by the streetcar company in Rochester, New York. Cleveland Railway 1079 ran in Cleveland for only five years until it was sold for use in London, Ontario in 1923; later it went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where it was retired in 1951 and is preserved (apparently in complete condition, though I've never seen a photo of this car taken in recent decades) at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society.

It's unfortunate that none of the more modern city cars that ran in Cleveland were preserved, particularly the newer Peter Witts and the famous articulated cars, until the PCC era is reached, by which time Cleveland Railway had become Cleveland Transit System. One PCC car built for CTS by Pullman in 1946, car 4223, is being fully restored by the Illinois Railway Museum. The most interesting aspect of this car's design is arguably that it's thought likely that it belongs to a series of cars originally ordered for Baltimore, but cancelled following takeover of that city's streetcar lines by Baltimore Transit. Certain obscure design features in the 1946 Cleveland cars suggest specifications issued by Baltimore, but documentation on this is tough to come by. Regardless, the PCC cars were the last city cars built for Cleveland and end the story begun by cars like 0140 in Dearborn.

Cleveland streetcar history

I stumbled across a blog post here from back in 2014 that was published by the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan concerning some upkeep work that was done on their historic Cleveland single-trucker, Cleveland Railway 0140. Of the three pieces of equipment owned by the Ford museum that are on the list, this is the eldest and most significant - but it appears that my ownership history had been lacking. I had formerly listed the car as having belonged to Cleveland Electric Railway from construction until 1910, but the Ford Museum's page suggested that the car was built for the Woodland Avenue & West Side Street Railroad. The what? This sounds like a job for Google!

So it appears that the WA&WSSRR existed until 1893, meaning that this car would have indeed been built for them. Then that line became part of Cleveland City Railway, and according to this site CCR was folded into Cleveland Electric in 1903. So that's where the car's ownership history stands now: six different owners and one renumbering across 125 years. Stuff like this is always interesting to me but it's also a good reminder that the information in the PNAERC list is only as good as its sources.

A new identity for an old interurban car

The Rockhill Trolley Museum's major restoration project at the moment is Chicago Aurora & Elgin 315, its 1909 Kuhlman-built heavy interurban car. This car has been the subject of an on-again, off-again backdating and rebuilding for the past decade or so but lately the project has been very much on-again.

Work on car 315 hasn't just been limited to repairs; the car is being partially backdated to its as-built appearance in 1909. This includes removal of some modernization features like clerestory ventilators as well as reinstalling the arched stained-glass upper sash windows that the CA&E referred to as "streamer sash." Those were removed during the 1940s in a rebuilding but they're being put back in by RTM.

This past week the car received a first coat of Pullman green on much of its exterior. And with that, it ceases to be Chicago Aurora & Elgin 315 and instead becomes Aurora Elgin & Chicago 315. The AE&C was what that line was known as until a corporate reorganization in 1922. Car 315 is one of only two surviving CA&E cars to be painted in the colors of the original company and the only one of those two to have seen this level of authentic backdating. (One other CA&E car has been backdated and regained its upper-sash windows, car 320 in Iowa, but its target date is the mid-1920s after the corporate reorganization.)

As an aside, of the 11 ex-AE&C wood passenger cars preserved, there is an astonishing variety of liveries represented: two cars in the original Pullman green, one in 1920s dark red, two in 1930s maroon, four in 1940s blue, and two in 1950s crimson. Quite the circus fleet!

Mysterious origins: Interprovincial Railway 8

Here's a car that isn't that mysterious at first glance, but I just can't figure out its ownership history. Interprovincial Railway 8 is a single-truck open car that is fully restored and in regular use at the Canadian Railway Museum in Delson-St Constant, Quebec. The trouble is, I can't make head nor tails of its origins.

According to my records - and thus the PNAERC roster - the car was built in 1895 by Patterson & Corbin for the Peterborough & Ashburnham Street Railway (number unknown). Then in 1918 it was sold to the Toronto Suburban Railway as their 18, then sometime later - possibly the 1920s - it was sold to the Interprovincial as their 8. Eventually it ended up as a trailer with Gillies Brothers in Braeside until in 1957 it was acquired by the Canadian Railway Museum.

Unfortunately there are a lot of holes in this history and I'm not very certain about any of it. It was very hard to find any information online about the P&A and even harder to find information on the Interprovincial. The P&A only operated cars until 1898, when it lost its franchise and shut down; streetcars in Peterborough started running again in 1902 under a different company. So this car wasn't owned by the P&A until 1918 but I don't know whether it was in Peterborough that late or went elsewhere earlier than I had thought. I also don't know when it was retired or what its condition was when it came to CRM. To further complicate things, CRM's website has changed in recent years to list the car as a TSR car rather than an Interprovincial car. Information on car 8 is badly needed to be sure! Something tells me that the origins of this car may not actually be that mysterious - they're only mysterious to me because I haven't personally tracked down this car's history. Ah, the raison d'être of the PNAERC site, as our friends in Delson might say.

EDIT: This mystery is solved! See here for information on this car's history.

ConnCo car work at Branford

The Shore Line Trolley Museum has a somewhat active Facebook page devoted to its shop activities and I noticed that they just recently posted some photos of Connecticut Company 1199 out in the sunlight - for the first time in quite a few years, if I understand correctly. This car is rather historic because it's the newest known Stephenson product in existence, dating to 1907. Intriguingly, Branford most likely also has the oldest Stephenson product in existence, a truly ancient horsecar dating to sometime around 1857 which is also thought to be the oldest preserved street railway vehicle in the world.

For some time 1199 has been stored on the west track of Branford's "Blossom Barn" along with ConnCo open car 614 and Brooklyn "Peter Witt" 8111 with rail access difficult at best. But it appears that it was pulled outside for some cleanup. From the photos it appears to be the recipient of some recent stabilization work; perhaps this is George Papuga's latest restoration project?

Charles City Western steeplecab restoration completed

More "old news" in this case is the fact that Charles City Western 300 at the Illinois Railway Museum has had restoration work completed and its status on the PNAERC roster has been changed from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally."

Substantial restoration work was actually completed towards the end of 2016 but the locomotive's first appearance in public service at IRM will likely be this coming weekend for Members Day. This is a unique piece of equipment, as it is the only existing locomotive built by McGuire-Cummings. That firm built a number of similar steeplecabs for a variety of interurban lines, many of them in Iowa (for some reason McG-C was popular among Iowa lines), but most examples succumbed relatively early.

This locomotive was originally acquired by IRM in 1972 as a parts source but its historic significant was recognized fairly quickly and it was retained, in dead storage for many years and then as the subject of a restoration effort that lasted some 15 years. It was designed for operation on either 600v or 1200v DC with the air compressor running off 1200v while the motors and control ran off of 600v via a dynamotor. The restoration has replaced the original CP-30 air compressor with a 600v example of the same type and has simply wired around the dynamotor to feed the various 600v systems, leaving the dynamotor itself in place as a relic.

Two Boston PCC cars cut up

It hasn't been an auspicious summer for Boston PCC cars. Following the scrapping of the ex-Dallas double-ender a few months ago, the Seashore Trolley Museum this past weekend cut up two more Boston cars. These were 3099 and 3122, both "standard" Boston cars built in 1945 by Pullman-Standard.

The photos above were taken in 2007. These cars were not accessioned parts of the Seashore collection; in other words they hadn't been acquired for the purpose of ultimate preservation, but rather had been purchased as parts sources and had been utilized mainly as storage lockers for spare components. In 2015 or 2016 they had been moved due to yard construction but at that time it was discovered that both cars were experiencing serious frame failures, so the parts were unloaded from the cars and they were designated for disposition.

This is not a great historic loss. Seashore has another car from this exact order, 3127, preserved as part of its historic collection and that car has been repainted to its earlier orange-and-cream service livery. Another car from the order, 3100, is preserved at the Connecticut Trolley Museum and has been the subject of on-again, off-again restoration work. And of course there are many Boston PCC cars of substantially similar design preserved at various museums and on the MBTA itself on the Mattapan line.

Mystery streetcars in Seattle

It's time for more mystery streetcars! Today I'm turning my attention to a pair of streetcars preserved at the Ballard Terminal Railway in Seattle. The Ballard Terminal, whose owner I believe also owns these two cars, has a very short "yard" just off of West 45th Street in Seattle which consists of a single curving siding. At the end of the siding sits an Oporto single-trucker, but I'm not particularly interested in that car because it doesn't qualify for inclusion in the PNAERC list. However on the ground along the fence are two car bodies that probably do qualify: a Birney and a double-truck turtleback roof car of (presumably) Stone & Webster design. They're visible on Google aerial photos and the roof of the double-trucker can be seen on Google Street View.

So... anyone know what these cars are? I know that Seattle Municipal Railway had both turtleback-roof cars and Birneys, as did - I believe - Tacoma Railway & Power. Both of those lines can boast of only a single Birney body currently on the PNAERC list so assuming the two Ballard cars are local they are fairly significant.

Dallas/Boston PCC scrapped

I can't recall offhand the last time that a car on the PNAERC list went directly from "undergoing restoration" to "scrapped" but I suppose there's a first time for everything. It was brought to my attention that this summer the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority in Dallas scrapped the ex-Dallas double-ended PCC car that had arrived there only a year and a half earlier.

The car was built by Pullman-Standard as Dallas Railway & Terminal 612, becoming Boston MTA (and later MBTA) 3334 in 1959 when it was sold for use in Massachusetts. In 1991 it was acquired by Trolleyville and moved to Cleveland, where it was stored indoors for most of the time until the Trolleyville collection was liquidated in 2009. At that time it was acquired by MATA but, lacking storage space, it was moved to the Illinois Railway Museum and stored there. It was moved to Dallas in December 2015.

As recently as early 2017 the car was undergoing a major rebuilding with the goal of making it operational; it had been stripped down to the steel shell and the entire car had been sand-blasted. But it seems that the frame was more heavily deteriorated than expected and McKinney decided that it would be uneconomical to repair the car for operation. So in May or June it was cut up. It's worth remembering that MATA is not a museum; they're basically a tourist railroad with a franchise to provide a public transportation service. So their primary mission isn't to preserve or restore Dallas streetcars, it's to provide reliable service along their street railway route.

Car 612 was far from unique. A dozen other other members of this class exist in various museums, though none in operating condition and only a couple retained as accessioned collection pieces. But all of the other examples are located in the northeast - none in their original home in Texas.

Black Hills Central update

As I did some web surfing looking for more information on Utah interurban cars, I came across an update on Bamberger 403. This classic Jewett wooden interurban car was built in 1910 as a motorized combine but was later rebuilt by Bamberger as a coach trailer. It strongly resembles (well, resembled) cars built for the North Shore Line in Chicago, of which none survived.

But it doesn't resemble them much any more. It was stored in steadily deteriorating condition at the Heber Valley Railroad in Utah until 2012, when it was sold to the Black Hills Central and moved to South Dakota. It appears, from an ATRRM blog post, that the BHC rebuilt it last year for use as a locomotive-hauled coach. It fits in well with the other ex-interurban cars in their regular train, the others being from the Oregon Electric, but it's too bad that the car has lost much of its classic appearance to a somewhat clumsy, if admittedly pragmatic, rebuilding. That said, the car wasn't exactly complete and original when it went to South Dakota, and at BHC it should be well maintained.

Saltair additions and a deletion

So it came to my attention, due to a thread over on RyPN, that the Utah State Railroad Museum in Ogden has a pretty nice online roster which includes a fair amount of information on their collection - including the four pieces of traction equipment they own. Only two of these, Bamberger "Bullet" car 126 and Salt Lake & Utah freight trailer 851, were already on my roster. The other two, big Salt Lake Garfield & Western ("Saltair") open car trailers whose numbers are unknown, were not on my roster. That has now been corrected.

The two cars (now on the roster here and here) are from the 301-313 series of cars, built in the company shops in 1922 using parts from older 1890s-era freight cars. The museum's website roster has a great deal of mechanical information on these cars which has also allowed me to flesh out the listing for an identical car at the Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista (that car is thought to be fleet number 306). Both of the cars owned by the Ogden museum are stored, along with the Bamberger "Bullet" car body, at the Ogden Business Depot on the north side of Ogden near the county fairgrounds. The Google Maps aerial photo above shows, from left to right, one of the open cars; the "Bullet" on a flatcar; the other open car; and the remains of dome car "Moon Glow." There's also a brief article (with photos) about the open cars, forecasting a restoration which I believe has not yet happened, at this link.

And the roster linked above also contained a piece of information about yet another example of these big Saltair open cars which I was able to confirm independently, namely that the fourth of the previously surviving examples of this type was scrapped at the Heber Valley Railroad in 2009 following serious damage from a fire set by an arsonist. So that car has been removed from the roster, leaving Heber Valley on the PNAERC list with only three Lackawanna MU cars used in locomotive-hauled train service.

MBTA 01400s running

2009 photo by Jason Grant

Within the last couple of weeks Seashore volunteers have gotten their married pair of MBTA 01400 series Red Line subway cars operating. These cars came to Seashore in 1997 following retirement from service but have operated little, if at all, during the last 20 years. But museum volunteers have now mounted trolley poles (unprototypical, but necessary for operation) to the car roofs and gotten the pair running. It's not clear how much use they'll see, or whether they're cleared for public/revenue operation, but their status on the list has been changed to "operated occasionally."

The 69'-long 01400s were the last Red Line cars built of steel and the last cars built for that line before the MBTA took over from the Metropolitan Transit Authority. They were constructed by Pullman-Standard in 1963 and originally wore a flashy (for subway cars) livery of dark blue and white with gold striping. Seashore is currently raising money to repaint its pair in that original, and unique to this series, color scheme.