Indianapolis Railways car scrapped

UPDATE: As of late June 2018 it seems this car is still in existence! It was located so far back in the trees that on a previous visit it appeared to be gone. We regret the error.

Original post:
I received confirmation this weekend that earlier in the month the last existing streetcar from Indianapolis Railways, IR 153, was scrapped by the Indiana Transportation Museum at their site in Noblesville.

This is probably the most historic car to be cut up so far at ITM. It was built by Brill in 1932 and ran until the end of Indianapolis streetcar service in 1953. It was arguably the most modern "traditional" streetcar in the United States and one of very few preserved cars built during the Depression for street railways. These cars were pretty similar to the Portland 800s, of which one survives in operating condition, but utilized the more modern single-end Peter Witt arrangement later used on PCC cars.

The body of car 153 was acquired by ITM (then IMOTAC, the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication) in 1972; it is pictured above at the Noblesville site in 1979. As can be seen, it was far from unsalvageable at the time; though missing windows and with some minor damage, it seems to have had fairly little rust. Seashore has certainly restored far worse to operation.

Unfortunately car 153 became one of the most forgotten streetcars in a museum. It was never moved nor put on trucks, and a forest of sorts steadily grew up around it. The above photo is from 2007 and shows that the car has become largely overgrown. I dimly recall from a visit to ITM a few years before this that the car was difficult to see, much less access, during the summer when the site was a bit more overgrown.

The car's longtime site is now a scorched patch of earth. So car 153 has been removed from the PNAERC site; the only known piece of Indianapolis Railways electric equipment to survive is now a trolley bus at the Illinois Railway Museum which itself only escaped an aggressive scrap drive a few years ago. ITM's electric collection is down to 18 pieces (of which four are Lackawanna MU trailers) and the scrappers are supposed to be on site this coming week; supposedly the next cars in line are the three remaining CTA 4000s. Stay tuned.

Major culling of the Muni fleet

Today a link to this document, published earlier this month by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, was posted to Railway Preservation News and it contains a trove of fascinating information. SFMR, or Muni, owns no fewer than 58 PCC cars which makes them - I believe - the largest owner of PCC cars in the country. Of those, some 31 are in regular service (or currently being rebuilt, soon to reenter service) while the remaining 27 are stored. Of these 27 cars, it appears that 12 of them are to be disposed of. Part of the impetus for this is evidently that the entire collection of spare PCC cars (and other out-of-service historic vehicles of various sorts) is to be moved from Marin Yard to the Cow Palace in Daly City.

The list of twelve cars is a very interesting one. A couple of the cars are obvious candidates for disposal: two ex-Philadelphia cars that are virtually certain never to run, either in San Francisco or anywhere else. Car 1064 never actually wore that number in service; it was acquired back in 1990, the first PCC purchased from Philadelphia, and was intended to be rebuilt to supplement the original F-Market fleet of ex-Philly PCC cars but when disassembled was found to be very badly rusted. It has been stored in mostly disassembled state for some two decades. Car 1054 was part of the original F-Market PCC fleet but on November 16, 2003 it was rear-ended and suffered catastrophic frame damage. Judged irreparable, it's been in dead storage since.

Then there are the two Pittsburgh PCC cars, 4008 and 4009, which have never run in San Francisco and have been stored since acquisition 17 years ago. These were cars that were completely rebuilt in the late 1980s from 1700-series postwar PCC cars, so their body construction differs significantly from original PCC cars. They also have sealed windows, potentially a liability in California. They are, however, complete and generally undamaged cars and are being offered complete - unlike the other cars on the list, which are going to be (or already have been) stripped for parts by Muni prior to sale or donation.

The remaining eight cars on the list include three "Baby Tens," PCC cars built new for Muni in 1951, and five ex-St. Louis Public Service cars bought secondhand in 1957. The "Baby Tens" are 1023, 1031, and 1038. What intrigues me is that Muni has nine cars of this series in storage and the other six all spent many years away from San Francisco (two at Orange Empire and four in South Lake Tahoe) while the three up for disposal have been stored by Muni itself the entire time since they were retired in 1982. Apparently the other six benefited from their time away from San Francisco's salt air.

And finally there are the five ex-St. Louis Public Service cars, 1106, 1108, 1125, 1139, and 1140 (not be confused with 1040). Muni currently has no fewer than 12 of these ex-SLPS cars in storage (though one, car 1704, is restored to St. Louis colors and is considered a bit separately from the rest). Unlike with the "Baby Tens," the SLPS cars do not seem to have benefited from time away from Muni's care. Two of the cars, 1106 and 1140, were sold by Muni in 1994 (after a period of storage after retirement) to a collector in Lodi, California, from whom SFMR got the cars back in the early 2000s. A third car, 1108, was owned for a number of years by something called the Western Railroaders Hall of Fame. The other two cars being disposed of have been stored by Muni since retirement in 1982 (as have six of the seven ex-SLPS cars being retained).

One of the really interesting things about the document is that it appears that Market Street Railway Association disagreed with some of the cars being gotten rid of. Its judgment was that three PCC cars being retained by Muni - 1026, 1027, and 1028, all "Baby Tens" sold by Muni to Tahoe Valley Lines in 1994 and bought back in 2001 - were in worse condition than six of the cars on the disposal list. MSRA recommended that of those six cars - ex-SLPS 1106, 1108, 1139, and 1140, and Pittsburgh 4008 and 4009 - three be selected for retention and the three "Baby Tens" be disposed of. Muni seems to have declined to follow this suggestion.

An interesting - but understandable - aspect of this disposition is that it seems to largely disregard the difference between the Muni-original "Baby Tens" and the secondhand 1100s. Muni has rebuilt many cars in recent years but has yet to send out even a single ex-SLPS PCC for full rebuild. However in recent years Brookville, Muni's rebuilder of choice, has been fitting new-build Westinghouse-style PCC equipment to all rebuilt cars - including cars that, like the 1100s, started life with GE PCC equipment. It seems likely that Muni is viewing its remaining cars as shells, cars to be fitted with new electric equipment regardless of what they carry now.

All twelve cars marked for disposition have been noted as "for sale." The original Muni document is worth reading, as it suggests that major components will be removed from many of the cars (except for 4008 and 4009), meaning those cars are virtually certain to be scrapped. Even the remaining ex-Muni cars will be stripped of many components so they'll presumably be virtual shells.

Muskogee Birney repainted

From project worker Steve Iversen comes news that Muskogee Electric Traction 311, one of only four electric cars preserved in the state of Oklahoma, has been repainted. This car was built by American in 1924 and ran its entire nine-year service life in Muskogee, a small city 40 miles southeast of Tulsa. The car has been at the Three Rivers Museum in Muskogee for some time undergoing a slow restoration. But the exterior appears to be largely done, save for windows, and the car now has a fresh coat of paint.

Second car leaves Noblesville for preservation

A second car has left the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville for preservation. This time it's Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 606, later Chicago Transit Authority S-606, a wooden line car built for the railroad in 1923 and shown above in service in a 1952 Don Ross photo.

It doesn't look quite so good now. After the North Shore quit the 606 was sold to the CTA, which renumbered it S-606 and rebuilt it somewhat for use as a line car for its Skokie and Evanston lines that still used overhead wire at the time. Around 1975 the car suffered a grievous fire which led to its immediate retirement and in 1978 the hulk was sold to ITM and moved to Noblesville. It has been stored there in steadily worsening condition since (the above photo is from 2001).

Its new owner is RAIL Foundation, which has moved the 606's body (really more of a stripped frame at this point) to Murphysboro, Illinois where the organization is rebuilding South Shore wooden interurban combine 73. The trucks and mechanical components have been put into off-site storage. The eventual plan is to recreate the 606's body, using the original frame and what metal components can be salvaged, and restore the trucks and equipment for use under the car. It's a daunting prospect but if it happens this really will be a phoenix story like few others in rail preservation.

New Haven MU car identified

Yesterday brought an exciting find and a new addition to the PNAERC list, courtesy of this thread on Railway Preservation News. It seems that one pre-"washboard" New Haven electric MU car has survived, albeit not exactly intact.

The car in question, shown above in an Alan Maples photo from two years ago, is apparently ex-New Haven 4106, an Osgood-Bradley motor built in 1931 (click here for a diagram of this series). These were some of the MU cars that the New Haven ran that were particularly homely, with their shallow arched roofs and windows set way in from the corner posts. They were also real people haulers - this car has a seating capacity of 120.

Unfortunately not a whole lot is known about the car's history. I believe these cars were mostly retired by the late 1960s or early 1970s but I don't know about this car specifically; nor do I know how (or when) it ended up on the Gettysburg Railroad, where it was in the late 1990s. The RyPN thread suggests that it may have been on the Seaview Railroad in Rhode Island as of about 1990. Regardless, it was bought from the Gettysburg by the Blue Ridge Scenic (possibly in 1997 but I'm not certain) and has been stored at the BRS since then. At some point it was modified to be hauled by a locomotive; the electric equipment was all removed and the end windows were plated over. This may have been done by the New Haven (Penn Central?) or by a tourist line, I don't know. But this is a very historic car so it certainly deserves a spot on the PNAERC  list. Despite its latter-day tourist railroad number of 150 it has been added to the list as New Haven 4106. Any information on this car's history is greatly appreciated!

Chicago 'L' car leaves Noblesville

This news is a couple of weeks late, but a Facebook post here confirms that one of the 4000s at the Indiana Transportation Museum has, indeed, been moved to the RAIL Foundation site in Michigan City. It's impossible to tell from the photo but other sources suggest that this is car 4293, built by Cincinnati in 1922. It was acquired by ITM directly from the CTA and was the second 4000 to operate in Noblesville. It seems that after car 4454 (recently scrapped) was taken out of service, apparently in the 1980s, car 4293 was fixed up and painted in 1920s Chicago Elevated green and orange. It ran until sometime around 1999 or so, when it suffered a failure and was taken out of service, thus closing out forever the era of traction operation in Forest Park. I recall riding it in about 1996 and then seeing it again in 2001, by which time it was in the workshop and partly disassembled.

Anyway, car 4293 was in the best condition of the 4000s at ITM so it's good to see it saved. Its move to Michigan City makes it the first electric car to leave Noblesville intact since Chicago Aurora & Elgin 308 was sold to the Illinois Railway Museum back in 1996.

Montreal 2600 out of service

The Connecticut Trolley Museum Shop Blog reports that Montreal Tramways 2600, a mainstay of the museum's operating fleet, has been removed from service for the foreseeable future due to wheel damage. This 1929 car came straight to CTM from Montreal and has operated at Warehouse Point for years. Its status has been changed to "stored operable."

Other news items from the CTM shop blog include updates on work on Nassau Electric Railway 169, a rather historic single-trucker from Brooklyn, and news of repair work being performed on Oshawa 18, the museum's ex-Auburn & Syracuse Baldwin-Westinghouse steeplecab.

CTA car at Fox River under restoration

Chicago Transit Authority 4451 at the Fox River Trolley Museum is now in the midst of a major roof rebuilding project, according to a recent post on the FRTM website. For many years this car was one of the regular operating cars at FRTM but it was retired around 2016 due to general deterioration. It is now having a new roof put on, which when complete presumably will allow the car to be placed back into public operation. Its status on the PNAERC list has been updated to "undergoing restoration."

Judging from photos, 4451 and CA&E 458 - acquired eight years ago from Trolleyville - are now stored inside the museum's barn. It appears they have taken the indoor spots of CTA 4288 and CA&E 317 respectively, two cars which have been out of service for at least twenty years.

Toronto PCC being rebuilt at McKinney Avenue

The McKinney Avenue Transit Authority has posted an update on its Facebook page with photos of its latest rebuild project, Toronto Transportation Commission 4614. This is a Toronto 4600, a car rebuilt by the TTC in the early 1990s and retired just a few years later. It's one of two identical cars (the other is 4613) acquired by MATA more than twenty years ago, in 1996, and stored since then. It's been an on-again, off-again subject of interest for rebuilding; a few years ago work started but was stopped, possibly in favor of an ex-Dallas double-end PCC which was scrapped last year. But now work has resumed in earnest and the scope is impressive. The car's interior has been stripped out and, more startlingly, a left-hand door has been cut in just behind the motorman's position (see above). This is almost exactly what Mexico City did to the PCC cars they bought secondhand from Detroit. It will be interesting to see 4614 when it emerges from the McKinney workshop.

Hagerstown & Frederick car news

A couple of interesting articles about Hagerstown & Frederick 150, one of three surviving pieces of equipment from that line, came to my attention recently. The first is here: an article from June 2017 stating that Don Easterday, longtime owner of car 150 and the reason it was saved and cosmetically restored, had passed away in November 2016. The article goes on to say that plans are afoot to place the car on display at a new library in Myersville.

Here's the second article, from last November, stating that Myersville had approved expenditures to move car 150 to a city park in town for storage until the library is built. I wasn't able to find any more recent information but my best guess is that car 150 is currently at the city park and that it is now owned by the city. As such, its listing in the PNAERC roster has been appropriately updated.

As an aside, H&F 150 is quite significant as a car from that system, but it's also rare as one of only four streetcars preserved that ran in South Carolina (and the only one of the four from Columbia) and one of only three streetcars built by the Southern Car Company.

More equipment cut up at ITM

An observer from central Indiana contacted me yesterday to let me know that he had swung through Forest Park in Noblesville to see what was happening with the scrappers on-site at the Indiana Transportation Museum. It seems that they've been concentrating on some cars near the shop building, three out of the four shown in this photo.

The car nearest the camera in that shot is Chicago Elevated Railway 4454, a standard 4000-type 'L' car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and sold directly to ITM by the CTA in 1974. Back in the 1970s, and maybe into the 1980s, this car was regularly used at ITM but at some point it broke and was retired in favor of car 4293. It deteriorated badly in recent years and was in generally poor condition. Reports are that it has now been cut up with no parts salvaged, so it has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Car 4293, the second car from the camera in the linked photo, was the most recent car to run in service at ITM (around 1999 or so) and has not been scrapped. The third car in the photo was S354, previously confirmed to have been scrapped.

The car furthest from the camera in that shot, and shown better in the 2013 photo above taken by Zach Ehlers, is CTA S355. This car was originally number 4315 and was built about the same time as 4454 but was converted to a work motor in 1965. ITM acquired it in 1978 and it has never run in Noblesville. It too has apparently been cut up, trucks, motors, and all, and has been removed from the PNAERC site.

The final car confirmed to have been scrapped, and the first of the unique cars at ITM, is Indianapolis & Cincinnati 606, shown above in a 2001 photo. Built by Cincinnati in 1923, this was only surviving car from the I&C and was one of only three survivors from Union Traction, which acquired the car in 1929 and renumbered it 447. It ended up being retired by Indiana Railroad in 1938 (photo of car 446 here) and in 1977 the car body was acquired by ITM and moved to Noblesville. Intriguingly, a few cars of this series were sold to the Milwaukee Electric and rebuilt as articulated cars. The CERA book on the "TM" says one was car 606 but evidence on the side of this body proved that wrong. It's now a moot point, though, for although the car had an interesting history, its manifestly poor condition and the unfolding implosion of ITM have closed out its story. It is now off the PNAERC list.

It seems likely that this isn't the end of the torches in Noblesville; I will do what I can to keep abreast of the situation and update the PNAERC roster as appropriate.

Missing PCC car found

The above photo was recently posted online and appears to prove that a Shaker Heights PCC car, formerly "lost" for a number of years, is indeed still around and moldering away in rural Arkansas. The car in question is Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 47 and it has now been added to the PNAERC list as being under private ownership. For years this car has been on my "mysteries" list, as the last I had heard of it, it was being traded to someone in Arkansas by National Capital in 1987 for DC Transit 1540. It's one of ten PCC cars that Shaker Heights acquired from St. Louis Public Service (this car was SLPS 1773) and joins two others of the series, both owned by Buckeye Lake Trolley, in "preservation."

EDIT: The reputed owner of this car, Jim Cates, died in August 2020 according to this obituary. At this point the current status, and certainly the outlook for car 47 is uncertain at best.

Second rebuilt PCC returns to El Paso

The second El Paso PCC to see its rebuilding completed by Brookville has returned to Texas. This car is 1512, which started its life in 1937 as San Diego 513 and went to El Paso in 1950. Like the other five cars being rebuilt, it's no longer a GE air-electric; it's now an all-electric and has been fitted with the same Westinghouse-esque control equipment that Brookville is fitting to cars it rebuilds for Muni. And like the first car to be delivered from Brookville, 1506, it is in traditional El Paso mint green. Its status has been updated in the PNAERC roster and ownership has been transferred to Sun Metro, which will be operating the new heritage car line.