The new addition is San Diego 1003, one of the 1981-vintage U2 light rail cars that opened service on the San Diego light rail system and really helped to usher in the modern light rail renaissance. It joins identical car 1008, which was acquired by Orange Empire in 2016. I'm not exactly sure when OERM acquired car 1003; I visited in January 2018 and didn't see it, but I confess that I saw one of these light rail cars from afar and didn't walk over to see it (I'm personally a fan of older equipment - though that doesn't say much in this case) so I very likely just missed seeing it. Anyone know when it showed up? EDIT: Thanks to Bill Wulfert for pointing out that the car arrived in March 2018!
Anyhow, this makes the sixth San Diego U2 to be preserved, at least as far as I know. Besides the two cars at Orange Empire there are two at Rio Vista, one at Rockhill Trolley Museum in Pennsylvania, and the very first car, 1001, is apparently being preserved by the San Diego transit system itself. Although they're modern LRVs by overall design concept these cars are mostly free of computers and use camshaft control, so they'll likely be easier to keep running in the long term than newer cars. Or so the aforementioned museums hope!
And on a final note, I'm always a fan of weird coincidences. The addition of this car makes it the third car at Orange Empire numbered 1003. The other two, an LARy Birney and a San Diego double-truck streetcar, are in slightly worse condition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Empire_Railway_Museum
ReplyDeleteSan Diego Trolley Siemens-Duewag U2 cars 1008 and 1003 are two of the newest arrivals to the museum (March 2016 and March 2018, respectively), joining original San Diego Electric Railway PCC cars 508 and 528 as part of the San Diego collection. The 1008 and 1003 operate on select weekends at the museum independently, and occasionally as a two-car train.