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!