Yakima car extracted from the rain forest

Thanks to Olin Anderson for passing along news out of the Northwest Railway Museum: Yakima Valley Traction 20, the 1930 Master Unit that has been "lost" in the Snoqualmie rain forest for nearly six decades, has been extracted and sent by truck back to its home city. Its condition is, admittedly, wretched. Besides having suffered very serious deterioration to its body and interior, the car suffered the indignity of having a tree fall on it and stove in the body over one bolster. It is going to the Yakima Electric Railway Museum, which occupies the old YVT shop site, to join sister cars 21 and 22. What the museum's plans for this car might be, I'm not sure.

The departure of car 20 leaves three privately-owned electric cars on or near Northwest Railway Museum property in Snoqualmie. All of them have suffered grievously from decades of neglect and the ravages of the rainy local climate. The worst of the three is Pacific Northwest Traction 60, a wooden interurban car body stored back in the woods on the same track as YVT 20. Also on that track, and visible in the background in one of the photos on the NWRM's post about YVT 20, is Portland Traction 1058, a wooden line car which was complete when retired. Then located out of the woods and in or near the NWRM yard is BCER S103, a wooden steeplecab converted into a snow plow which suffered a frame collapse a few years back. What will become of these three pieces is anyone's guess.