First rebuilt El Paso PCC outshopped

More news shows up on Facebook: the El Paso Streetcar page there posted a few photos late yesterday showing the first of the El Paso PCC cars to be outshopped by Brookville. It's not clear whether car 1506 is completed or whether it's in some nearly-complete stage of rebuilding, but it looks complete - and certainly looks very different. As shown above the car now has an enormous fairing stretching almost the entire length of the roof which presumably contains air-conditioning equipment and may also contain propulsion or control electronics, I don't know. It also sports a rear-mounted pantograph as well as a variety of new warning lights on the front and rear. That said, the car has kept its original number and is painted in one of El Paso's several PCC liveries, the same mint green with red trim livery worn by the El Paso tribute car in San Francisco.

At the moment I've changed car 1506's description from "prewar PCC" to "modified PCC" but it's still listed as being under restoration, since it's still at Brookville and it's not in operation yet. At the moment it still has its original electrical equipment shown in the listing though I'm pretty sure that's not accurate. I need to get information on what electrical and mechanical equipment is being fitted to these cars by Brookville. Car 1506 is also still noted as owned by Paso del Norte Streetcar Preservation Society, which for decades was the caretaker for the collection of El Paso PCC cars in storage in that city, but I'm not sure that's still accurate. Anyone know who technically owns these El Paso rebuilds and/or will be operating them?

New Jersey historic cars

Piscataway Township in New Jersey, of all things, has posted on Facebook some photos of a selection of historic New Jersey electric cars. The post shows photos of two cars owned by the United Railroad Historical Society and one car owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, which is closely affiliated with URHS. NJ Transit 5221 and NJ Transit 5223 are rather aged work cars that until only a decade ago served on the Newark subway system. Both of these are cars whose histories are somewhat uncertain; car 5223 in particular is a bit of a mystery, as it was obviously rebuilt from a standard passenger car but which one is unknown to me. The third car is PSCT 2651, a Public Service standard car built in 1917 and subject of a slow long-term restoration effort by NJERHS. (Until now this car has been listed on the roster under the railway name "New Jersey Consolidated Transport" but that has been corrected to PSCT.) All three cars are apparently stored at the site of a Kinkisharyo plant in Piscataway where subway cars from Atlanta will soon be undergoing rebuild. What the long-term plans are for these cars, which have knocked around various locations in the northeast including the National Capital Trolley Museum and Lyons Industries in Pennsylvania, is uncertain.

And now for the appeal for help: does anyone have any mechanical information on these cars?

The Lake Shore car

Traction preservation aficionados are surely familiar with South Shore cars, the ubiquitous (in the Midwest, anyway) heavyweight steel interurban cars retired in the 1980s and now scattered hither and yon, mostly in disrepair outside a couple of outposts in Illinois and Wisconsin where they operate. But what about Lake Shore cars? There's only one of those: Chicago Lake Shore & South Bend 73, later Chicago South Shore & South Bend 1126, a wood car built by Niles in 1908 and only survivor of the predecessor to the South Shore.

Car 73 is privately owned by Bob Harris, who back in 2004 had it moved to a workshop in southern Illinois and started funding a complete restoration of what started out as a rather decrepit car body. The photo above was taken in 2009, by which point the car's frame and exterior had been totally rebuilt. But with the arrival of the recession work stopped and the car was left stored mid-restoration - until now. Bob recently contacted me to state that restoration work has restarted on the car, and he also sent some very interesting information on car 73's history which has informed changes to its PNAERC listing. The below data comes from a spreadsheet Bob forwarded to me with information on car 73's history and equipment.

Car as built in 1908 by Niles
Seats: 54
Trucks: Baldwin MCB 90-35
Motors: 4 x WH 143D (6600vAC single-phase, 125hp)
Control: WH AB-189 C-Y single-end
Weight: 110,000 lbs
Length: 57'2"
Width: 10'0"
Height: 13'8"

Car as rebuilt to CSS&SB 1126 in 1925
Seats: 46
Trucks: Baldwin MCB 90-35
Motors: WH 567C9 (600vDC, 210hp)
Control: WH HBF
Weight: 108,000
Length: 58'4"
Width: 10'0"
Height: 13'8"

Bob notes that the car, already known to have been rebuilt c1909 following a wreck, was assigned the number 1126 when the CLS&SB became the CSS&SB on July 14, 1925 and was shortly thereafter rebuilt for 1500vDC operation as a combine with somewhat reduced seating capacity. He says it was typically assigned to the 12:05am local from Kensington to Hegewisch and return, a role it filled until May 27, 1927, after which it is not thought to have been used in passenger service. It did continue running in work service until December 30, 1938 when it was removed from operation and assigned to be a yard office at Randolph Street. It was permanently retired in December 1940 and the body sold.

As I understand it, the car as restored will be something of a hybrid. From the floor up, it will be as close as possible a restoration to as-built condition. Mechanically, though, as far as I know it will basically be the 1126, including WH 567 motors and 1500-volt electrical equipment. Its original AC equipment is probably extinct and it would be impossible to find anywhere for the car to run, but with 1500vDC equipment there are a few options for it to motor again someday plus the equipment - the same as was used on the South Shore steel cars - is readily available from scrapped steel cars.

New York Central 4331

Robert MacDowell kindly sent along the above photo, taken within the last few weeks, of the new paint job on what is now New York Central 4331. The only complete ex-NYC heavyweight MU car in existence, this car was until today listed on the PNAERC list under its Penn Central number, 1291. It was acquired by the Southern Michigan Railroad in 2016 and was just recently repainted. Kudos to Robert and the folks at SMRR!

The Lincoln Birney

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson from National Capital Trolley Museum, who has been doing a tremendous job of researching some of the "mysteries" associated with the PNAERC list. Most recently he has sent a real trove of information on Omaha Lincoln & Beatrice 4, a Birney preserved at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska.

This may look like Pacific Electric 331 but actually it's an incredible illusion! This is indeed the aforementioned OL&B 4, pictured on the campus of Union College, which has owned it since 1991. It's in this guise because it was used for filming the movie Changeling in 2008, a job which saw it shipped out to California and fixed up complete with a new (albeit inaccurate) paint job. Wesley saw this recent post that mentioned the car and was able to get in contact with Lou Ann Fredregill with UC, who kindly provided these photos and permission to reproduce them.

This is a rather significant car, not for its design - it's a fairly standard Birney, built in 1926 by Brill - but for its history. It's the only surviving Birney from Baltimore, a city which ordered a number of these cars but didn't like them much and sold them off after only a few years (a common story among big-city street railways that purchased Birneys). In Baltimore it was United Railways & Electric 4024. It's one of only three ex-UR&E cars preserved outside the city of Baltimore.

The car has been stored outdoors for most of the last few years but apparently has just recently been moved inside to slow down deterioration. The college is looking for grant money to rehab the car. Fortunately it seems to be viewed as a relic of some importance to the college, so there is real interest in seeing it preserved and kept up. There has been some doubt about the car's identity, but the newspaper article below, which was printed back in 1967, describes the car's provenance to the degree it can be established at this time. There were two different city systems in Lincoln that used Birneys, Lincoln Traction and the OL&B, but LT numbered its cars in the 300-series (plus they differed in some marked respects from this car body), so the homeowner's discovery of the fleet number 4 on the car itself would seem to indicate that it is, indeed, ex-Baltimore and ex-OL&B.

Thanks again to Wesley Paulson for researching this car!

Good news and bad from San Francisco

Market Street Railway's excellent blog at streetcar.org is an ongoing resource for updates on the Muni fleet of preserved cars. It recently featured a couple of pieces of news on the PCC fleet, one bit of bad news followed by a bit of good. The bad news came on New Years Day when car 1063, the most recently-rebuilt car to arrive back from Brookville, got into a serious accident with a box truck that stove in its front end. For the moment it's out of service.

Then there was the good news, which came shortly thereafter. Muni car 1050 is on its way back from rebuilding (it's probably in San Francisco now) and, like 1063, it is returning in a different livery from what it had before. Unlike 1063 it's also representing a different city: while it left in Muni green and cream it's returning in St. Louis Public Service red and cream, complete right down to the Civil Defense logo behind the front doors. Previously Muni had represented St. Louis with "actual" ex-SLPS car 1704, but it's been out of service for many years and there don't appear to be plans to rebuild it so car 1050 is now "flying the flag" for that street railway system. A photo of the car in transit, from the MSR blog, is above.

A new state has a preserved electric car

Today is something of a hallmark day - I've added another state to the PNAERC list as containing within its boundaries a preserved electric car! Nick Christiansen helpfully submitted as an update the fact that Oregon Electric 133, formerly in use (though recently in disuse) on the Black Hills Central as a locomotive-hauled coach, was sold in May 2017 to a business in Soldotna, Alaska. Yes, that Soldotna, not the one in your state. Anyway, there are some photos here (including the one above) that suggest the car was headed to Alaska Berries Winery however this article has more information and makes it appear that car 133 was actually purchased by a different business, a coffee shop. The coffee shop owner has already rebuilt an ex-C&NW gallery car from Chicago and opened it as "Brew 602" so that's what car 133's new owner is noted as in the roster.

So there are now 47 states listed on PNAERC along with the various Canadian provinces and other countries. Of the three remaining states with no identified electric cars, one - Hawaii - is probably fairly obvious (though there may actually be a Birney in a spaghetti restaurant in Honolulu but I haven't been able to confirm that or find any solid information on it). Care to guess at the other two states we're missing?