"Baltimore" car back in San Francisco

Thanks to the Market Street Railway blog, we've got an update on the latest news with the Muni PCC fleet: namely that car 1063, the "Baltimore" car, is back from its latest Brookville rebuild. (This is what, maybe the car's third major rebuild following the 1980s SEPTA GOH and 1995 MK rebuilding jobs?) Anyway, the car is no longer in simplified National City Lines yellow and grey but is now in the much more attractive prewar Baltimore livery of blue-green and cream with an orange belt rail. The post makes it clear that the photographs are color-shifted and that the actual car is much less blue than the photos make it look.

In turn, car 1061, the "Pacific Electric" car, has been transported to Brookville for its rebuilding job. Both 1061 and 1063 have had their records updated in the PNAERC list.

Pittsburgh PCC numbering history corrected

The latest post on Bruce Wells' "Weakly Reporting" blog has some interesting information on the Pittsburgh PCC preserved at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center in Pittsburgh. The car was retired in 2000, some 13 years after it was completely remanufactured as PAT 4007. The Pittsburgh 4000s were said to be rebuilt PCC cars but most of their components, including most of the exterior sheathing and most or all of the electrical and mechanical equipment under the floor, was constructed new in the 1980s. However as I understand it each car did receive some vital components from a particular 1700-series 1949-built predecessor.

A while back I tracked down a roster showing which 1700-series car had been turned into which 4000-series car. But there were some oddities and at least one 4000-series car didn't have a predecessor listed at all. For car 4007 the original number listed was 1729, and apparently earlier this year when the car at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center was repainted from later PAT livery into earlier Pittsburgh Railways livery, Bruce and the PTM crew (who helped with this cosmetic makeover) used the same source material I did because the car ended up numbered as 1729.

However it appears this is wrong! Documentation from the 1980s has since turned up which suggests that car 1719, not 1729, was the one heavily rebuilt as PAT 4007. So the car's record on the PNAERC list has been updated and Bruce's post states the car itself will be renumbered next year.

Windsor car body to be restored

A newspaper article here that was linked from RyPN suggests that the city of Windsor, Ontario has decided to fund the restoration (cosmetic, presumably) of Sandwich Windsor & Amherstberg 351, a body that was recently donated by an individual to the city. The car originally ran on Staten Island; more information is at this post. As part of this decision the car's donation to the city was also accepted, so it has been updated from being privately owned to now being owned by the City of Windsor.

Winona streetcar in service

More good news comes from the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and in particular from MSM's Excelsior site. It appears that Winona 10, subject of a restoration project stretching back over more than a decade, has been completed and cleared for public service. The car ran for the Heritage Rail Alliance meeting a couple of weeks ago and a photo (above) is now featured on the MSM website. As such, its condition has been appropriately updated in the PNAERC roster.

This is just the most recent of MSM's "chicken coop" restorations, joining Duluth 78 and Twin Cities 1239 (both also located at Excelsior) in that distinction. In fact, MSM now has fewer unrestored car bodies than restored ones, an admirable accomplishment! The Winona car was rebuilt using a truck acquired from Trolleyville that originally came from Lancaster, Ohio. It's what I would consider a pre-Birney single-trucker, meaning not simply that it was built before the Birney but that it's a transition design with an arched roof and steel or semi-steel construction. There aren't a lot of examples of these around and I think that this car may be the only one currently operational.

Scranton 324 progress

One of the more remarkable traction restoration projects going on right now is Scranton Transit 324, which started out as an unusual artifact in its own right. Built as a rather early double-truck car in 1903, it was heavily rebuilt in 1916 with an arched roof and steel sides. It survived as a body and was scooped up by the Electric City Trolley Museum in 2000. Over the last couple of years it has undergone a startling transformation, with its body torn down to the frame and totally rebuilt (due in large part to Keith Bray, who has contributed to a number of car restoration efforts in the mid-Atlantic region). Streetcars that were so heavily modernized in the company shops were not uncommon at one time but aren't very well represented in preservation so this car is pretty significant. (It's also a flashier paint job than 99% of the other streetcars out there!)

Anyway, until now it has been listed on PNAERC as a body, but the photo above showed up on the ECTM website at some point recently and proves that the car is now on its trucks. So I've updated the list to reflect that it now has Brill 27G trucks and WH 101 motors installed (at least I believe that's what's under the car now). It looks like it's still waiting for controllers but I'm sure those aren't far off and they may actually be installed already.

TARS car restoration work

While there are no fewer than 23 cars preserved from the Third Avenue Railway System in New York, there are relatively few of the panel-ended deck-roof cars that were so closely associated with the company for decades. Of extant TARS cars on the PNAERC list a dozen - more than half - are 1930s-era arch-roof cars that were later sold for overseas use while another five are snow sweepers. Of the other six, three are double-truck closed cars and all three of these are stored in complete but poor condition, victims of benign neglect. At least, that has been the case - car 884, a 1909  Brill convertible and one of the earliest acquisitions by Branford (the photo above shows it around the time of its preservation in 1948), is now the subject of a restoration project. The car was operational until the recent hurricanes that flooded Branford, and had been capable of propelling itself for occasional switch moves. Currently the car is being given an exterior paint job and some interior work although the full scope of the project isn't clear at this point. But it's good to see this rather historic car "under restoration" and not just in dead storage.

Pittsburgh PCC repainted

A Pittsburgh 4000-series PCC rebuild, car 4007, has been repainted in its "prehistory" Pittsburgh Railways colors of red and cream and has been given back its original number, PRys 1729. This is one of the cars that was heavily overhauled in the 1980s and acquired a mostly-new body and new trucks among other things at that time. However the car retained some core components from predecessor car 1729, so it has been classified on the PNAERC roster as a heavy rebuild rather than a new-build. Regardless, the car has been plinthed at the Schoolhouse Arts & History Center (formerly listed on PNAERC as the Schoolhouse Art Center) in suburban Bethel Park near Pittsburgh since 2000. It lost its number early in its static display career, though, at the request of a family whose relative had been killed in an accident that involved this car. Presmably, repainting it into Pittsburgh Railways colors and returning it to its earlier number doesn't conflict with this request.

CTA "L" cars added to roster

One of the more unexpected developments in historic preservation in Chicago in recent years has been the establishment by the Chicago Transit Authority of an "historic fleet" of vintage transit equipment. The CTA has maintained a pair of 1920s-era 4000-series cars since the 1970s, but other than those two cars the system has steadfastly declined to preserved other examples of its history. This isn't unusual; in fact New York is the only rail transit system in the country that seems interested in preserving more than a light sampling of its own historic rolling stock as it reaches retirement age. The CTA actually did have a collection of historic rolling stock until 1985, but in that year the historic collection was transferred to area museums (mostly IRM although one car went to Fox River). And the recent retirement of the 1960s-era Budd-built 2200-series cars, which were fan favorites of a sort due to their outdated blinker doors, did not prompt the CTA to keep any for preservation.

But things seemed to change in 2015. For the retirement of the 2400-series Boeing-built cars from passenger service in January 2015, the CTA repainted an entire eight-car train into their as-built red/white/blue colors. After that happened the repainted train was squirreled away and before long it - and the 1920s 4000s - were announced as the nucleus of a new historic fleet. Three buses were also added to the fleet and in August of this year a pair of 6000s were purchased from Fox River.

Anyway, it's taken me a while, but I've finally added those eight 2400-series cars to the PNAERC roster. The CTA itself has designated them for preservation per its website and they are being well maintained and available for use in historic operations (such as the CTA's 70th anniversary celebrations last weekend). The list is here. The CTA also operates a number of these Boeing-built cars in work service but those are not on the list as they're recently retired and in utility service.

BCER interurban car restoration completed

News from the Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society comes along that British Columbia Electric Railway 1304, dubbed the "Connaught" because of its claim to fame that it once carried the Duke of Connaught, has seen major restoration work completed. This car was acquired from the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society in 2009, moved to Surrey at that time, and has been undergoing a full rebuilding for most of the time since. FVRHS has established quite the reputation for restoring and preserving BCER interurban cars; of the seven interurbans from that line currently preserved, three (including three out of the four operational examples) are in Surrey including the two unique cars, 1207 and 1304, alongside their regular runner 1225. For an organization that didn't exist for several decades after the BCER quit, they've done an impressive job of acquiring and restoring equipment from that railway.

Puget Sound Electric car donated

The last surviving car from the Puget Sound Electric in Washington, car 523 (St. Louis, 1907) has been donated the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie. Earlier this week it was trucked from Petaluma, California, where it had been privately owned by Paul Class and stored with the Petaluma Trolley collection, to Snoqualmie. The news comes from the Snoqualmie Valley Record.

Car 523 is the only survivor from the PSE. Its post-preservation history is a little uncertain, to me at least. It was retired early, in 1929, and thereafter served as a yard office on the Tacoma Municipal Belt for some period. Eventually it was acquired by Paul Class and I think was located in Glenwood, Oregon for a time before making its way to Petaluma a decade or so ago. Any further information on this car's history in the last few decades would be appreciated.

As for NWRM, this is the only electric car of theirs currently on the PNAERC roster but they have been involved obliquely with traction preservation for decades. For a time in the 1980s and 1990s they owned a Kennecott Copper steeplecab, but that was cut up in 2000. And a private collection of several electric cars in various stages of collapse is located just off of NWRM property with a track connection to the museum's line. These cars are listed on the roster under private ownership.

Rhode Island Company

I'm always on the lookout for decent rosters and equipment history paperwork on electric railways about which I don't know much. This past weekend I picked up an old Branford publication which was essentially a roster of the Rhode Island Company, the street railway in Providence. I was able to correct several records in the list, as there are four cars preserved that are ex-Rhode Island Company. The book pointed out that RICo was only the street railway company from 1902 to 1919; after that time it was United Electric Railways while before 1902 it was the Union Railroad and possibly some other predecessor companies. The germane thing is that RICo 61 at Branford, the only pre-1902 car preserved from Providence, was indeed built for Union Railroad.

Of the four preserved Providence cars, two (the aforementioned single-trucker and the "emergency car" pictured above) are at Branford; a snow plow is at Seashore; and as of only a few years ago, a standard double-truck deck-roof car is owned by an antique automobile restorer in Providence. This car, UER 1068, had its body completely restored around 2006-2008 but to my knowledge it has just been sitting at the owner's garage since then. Hopefully the restoration was done correctly (no 2x4 framing, etc); it would be nice to see that car end up at a trolley museum and run again someday.