A little mystery

There are more than 40 pieces of equipment currently on the PNAERC list whose condition and/or current whereabouts are a complete mystery to me. I try and note these cars' condition/status as "situation unknown" so that I can try and come back to them later and figure out what has happened to them. I figure why not list them here; hopefully someone has some information on whatever became of these pieces of equipment and whether they're even still in existence.

Let's start out with the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. NMIH maintains the old Bethlehem Steel site, which has been quite impressively turned into a mixture of casino, event space, and history museum. Until recently, at least, there were seven or more electrified ore transfer cars, or "larries," that were used on the "high line" at the steel plant. More recently there seem to be fewer - overhead photos show six cars still on the "high line," which suggests that most likely one of the seven of these cars currently on the PNAERC list may have been scrapped. But which one? I've only been able to ID four from photos by fleet number, leaving cars 1, 4, and 8 as Schroedinger's Larries until I can figure it out.

UPDATE: This mystery has been solved! The two unidentified cars at NMIH are "D" and "F", a different type of cump car. Cars 1, 4, and 8 are presumed to have been scrapped at some point.

Then there's the odd case of the disappearing steeplecab. Until the 1990s the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio used - or at least owned - two electric locomotives, Texas Transportation 1 and 2. Number 2, an ex-Texas Electric cab-on-flat, has been very nicely restored and plinthed at the old brewery site. That leaves number 1, a standard Baldwin-Westinghouse class B, of which I cannot find any solid record more recent than 2006. At that time it was stored at the old SP engine shops just west of East Yard in San Antonio, but unless it's stored inside a building - a real possibility - it's not there anymore. So where is it - and is it even still in existence?
UPDATE: This mystery has been solved!

Finally, for the moment, there's New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board 50, a diminutive and homely four-wheel boxcab locomotive that until circa-2010 was on display in Mel Ott Park in Gretna, LA just across the river from New Orleans. Then it suddenly disappeared from its spot on the lawn alongside Belle Chasse Highway. There have been suggestions it was owned by the Louisana Steam Train Association, which has gone through some upheaval in recent years, so it's conceivable that it was scrapped by LASTA - or that they just moved it somewhere else, or that the city put it in storage somewhere. Anyone know?
UPDATE: This mystery has also been solved!

New Orleans car stripped for bar conversion

From a post on Facebook comes word that New Orleans Public Service 959, a standard car built by Perley-Thomas in 1924, has suffered an unfortunate fate. Complete and more-or-less operational until sometime during the last few months, it has now been stripped of its interior and all mechanical parts so that it can be converted into a centerpiece at a bar in Chattanooga.

Car 959, identical to the cars still in service on the St. Charles in in New Orleans, was among the 900s retired in 1964 when the Canal Street line was abandoned. It was sold, along with sister car 952, to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga. TVRM sold both cars to the Chattanooga Choo Choo in 1973, from what I can tell. CCC was a hotel and restaurant development built around the old Chattanooga railroad station and part of the development was a horseshoe-shaped streetcar line. Passengers could board the streetcar and travel about 3/4 mile on the line, ending up a few hundred feet from where they began.

I'd be interested in knowing more about the CCC operation but from what I can tell, 952 was regauged to standard and put into operation around 1973 and given a garish yellow livery. I don't believe 959 was put into operation at that time; I believe that it wasn't fixed up for operation until the mid-1980s, as suggested by this article. Either way, it was renumbered 953 to follow its sister, regauged, and put into service. In 1990 car 952 was sold to the San Francisco Municipal Railway, which restored it to New Orleans colors and put it into operation on the F-Market Line.

Car 959 continued operating at CCC into the 2010s, but within the last few years the streetcar operation was halted as part of a massive redevelopment of the train station site. Car 959 was moved to TVRM for storage. From what I've managed to gather, the now-stripped car body is going to be set in place at a bar back at the old CCC site. The loss of a complete, operational 1920s streetcar is not an everyday occurrence in 2018, though admittedly there are few streetcars more common than 900-series New Orleans Perley-Thomas cars. Still, it's a loss. For the time being I've left car 959's owner as CCC pending a definite name for the bar.

Thanks to David Wilkins for the heads-up on this one.

Regina streetcar added to the list

While perusing the website of the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, I came across a car that wasn't on my list. That's because they acquired it in 2013, which by my standards is fairly recently I suppose, and word of it just hadn't made it this far. The car is Regina Municipal Railway 8, a single-truck wood car built by Preston in 1913. It's a body but is said by the ERRS website to be in reasonably good condition.

I don't have much information on this car in the way of mechanical components so I guess some research is in order. From the photo, it appears to be a fairly standard Preston single-trucker, very similar to Toronto Suburban 24 in Edmonton, Lethbridge Municipal Railway 8 in Lethbridge, or Saskatoon Municipal Railway 40 in Saskatoon.

Is your organization on this list?

Thanks to the folks who contacted me to send in photos - it's much appreciated! What I figured I'd do at this point is put up a specific request list. These are cars that are in public organizations or nonprofits (not private collections) for which I don't have any photos at all. Please take a look and see if your organization, or one near you, is here - if you've got a recent shot of any of these cars I'd really appreciate it. (And of course it's also possible that some of these cars have been scrapped, so I'd be grateful to know that as well.) Thanks!

Boone & Scenic Valley: Metra 1511, Metra 1538, Metra 1551

Branford Electric Railway Association: Red Arrow 13

Canadian Railway Museum: Quebec Railway Light & Power 105, Toronto TP10

Canadian Science & Technology Museum: Toronto Railway 64

Chicago Transit Authority: CTA 2537, CTA 2544

City of North Vancouver, Canada: British Columbia Electric Railway 153

City of Savannah, Georgia: San Francisco Municipal Railway 1111

City of Villahermosa, Mexico: Veracruz 15

Connecticut Trolley Museum: York Utilities 72, CTA 4409

East Troy Electric Railway: Milwaukee Street Railway 200

Edmonton Radial Railway: Brandon Municipal Railway 6, Edmonton Radial Railway 38, Edmonton Radial Railway 53, Saskatoon Municipal Railway 54, Saskastoon Municipal Railway 62, Edmonton Radial Railway 65, Edmonton Radial Railway 73, London Street Railway 202, Toronto 4349

Electric City Trolley Museum: Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453

Fort Smith Trolley Museum: Fort Smith Light & Traction 10, Capital Transportation 305, Capital Transportation 310 

Friends of Light Rail: Pacific Gas & Electric 18, PG&E 36

Halton County Radial Railway: Sandwich Windsor & Amherstburg 212, Guelph Radial Railway 225

Indiana Transportation Museum: Lackawanna 4336, Lackawanna 4337, Lackawanna 4361

Kern County Museum: Bakersfield & Kern 10

Knoebel's Grove Amusement Park: Shamokin & Mt Carmel Transit 33

McKinney Avenue Transit: Dallas Railway & Terminal 189, DR&T 323

Middletown & Hummelstown: Red Arrow 83, Lackawanna 4307, CTA S372

Museum of the American Railroad: Metra "Highliners" 1548, 1585, 1608, 1647, 1652, and 1661

Museum of Transport: United Railways 77, United Railways 165, St Louis Public Service 850

National Museum of Industrial History: Bethlehem Steel 1, Bethlehem Steel 4, Bethlehem Steel 6, Bethlehem Steel 8

New York Transit Museum/NYCTA: NYCTA 4572, NYCTA 5000

North Texas Historic Transportation: Tandy Subway 1, Dallas Railway & Terminal 123

Old Pueblo Trolley: Phoenix Street Railway 44, Northern Texas Traction 557

Orange Empire Railway Museum: Los Angeles Railway 34, LARy 44, LARy 807, LARy 836, LARy 1003, LARy 9007

Paso del Norte Streetcar Preservation Society: El Paso City Lines 90

Petaluma Trolley: Northwestern Pacific 201

Pikes Peak Historical Street Railway: Colorado Springs & Interurban 48, Denver Tramways 329, Denver Tramways 724

Reading Co. Technical & Historical Society: Reading 9113

Reading Blue Mountain & Northern: Lackawanna 2341

San Diego Electric Railway Association: San Diego 1002

Seashore Trolley Museum (see note): Southwest Missouri 39, Massachusetts Northeastern 50, Waterville Fairfield & Oakland 60, Rochester & Sodus Bay 113, Monongahela West Penn 115, SEPTA 2278, MBTA 3338, MBTA 3344

SEPTA: SEPTA 484, SEPTA W54

Toledo Lake Erie & Western: CTA 4439, SEPTA C124

Travel Town: Los Angeles Railway 57, Los Angeles Railway 59

United Railroad Historical Society: Pennsylvania RR 427, PRR 453

Western Railway Museum: Pacific Gas & Electric 14, Presidio & Ferries 28, PG&E 41, PG&E 46, Stockton Electric 52, Interurban Electric 603

Wildwood Trolley: Five Mile Beach Electric 20

Wilmington & Western: Pennsylvania RR 450

Note on Seashore: I also have five photos of unidentified cars at Seashore (one, two, three, four, five). They're tarped, but I'd still be interested in identifying them. Contact me if you can ID any of them!

I need your help!

So here's the good news: we're almost ready to update the bad and outdated photo and video links on the PNAERC list. Webmaster Jeff hasn't yet been able to code the media links section so that we can update them as we go along, like we can with the other data. As such, the plan is just to upload a large spreadsheet file - with all of the new and replacement links - directly to the database backend. This will update all of the records at once and should fix most or all of our old or broken links.

And that's where you come in! I need as much help as I can get to add better and newer media files - both photos and video - to the database. The best way is to e-mail me the links* at fullparallel (at) wideopenwest.com. There are a few suggested guidelines:

PHOTOS
First off, you do NOT need to e-mail me repairs to links that are already in the database. A lot of the links (notably the ones to Dave's Rail Pix) have changed, but I've already caught all of those. What I'm looking for are better or newer photos of the cars on the list, in cases where photos currently on the list are poor or out-of-date. If there's a car that has been repainted (or, conversely, deteriorated significantly) since the photos currently in use, I want a photo of the car as it appears now. Or if the photo linked from the database isn't very good, I'd love to find a better one. One important rule I use: for the time being, at least, I am not looking for in-service photos. I'm really only looking for photos of cars on the list after they entered preservation (or, in cases where they're arguably not preserved, photos of them showing their current use).

*All photos used in the database need to be online. We will be linking to where they're currently hosted, so you don't need to e-mail me the photo, only the link. However if you have your own photo of a car that's better or newer than anything currently online, e-mail it to me and I can host it on this blog (credited, of course). Please no files more than 1 MB apiece. Thanks!

VIDEOS
The same goes with the photos, that I'm looking for videos that are better and more updated. For the most part I'm trying to limit the host to YouTube, as it is pretty consistent and doesn't seem like it's going anywhere for a while. But with videos, I really make an effort to only show a single car. This video of ConnCo 1160 has been edited to show only that car; that's good. This video, while very interesting, is not what I'm looking for - it shows a variety of cars in operation. Of course, there are times when a solo appearance isn't possible. In those cases, I'm looking for videos where the car being highlighted can be easily identified. This video is okay for Chicago Rapid Transit 1268 because it's leading, can be identified by number if you look closely, and hey, it's a trailer - it's not making any one-car trips down IRM's railroad. And a video doesn't need to show the car in operation; this video showing the curve-sider plinthed in the Cincinnati History Museum is quite good, if a little quirky. Finally, the video should show the outside of the car. There are a lot of "a ride on car 123" videos on YouTube and I'm not looking for those because they may show the track very nicely but I'm looking for images of the car.

Reading MU car move

I've managed to track down another electric car that changes hands a couple of years ago and bring its record (hopefully) up-to-date. Reading 9127, one of a couple of dozen "Blueliner" MU cars preserved, was evidently sold by the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society to the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway back around 2016. The photo above, taken in late 2016, shows the car after rebuilding and repainting by LGSR. That line now has six of these MU cars and they've made fairly substantial modifications to them including removal of most underbody equipment and virtually all rooftop equipment including the headlight fairings. But these aren't exactly an endangered species and several are preserved in basically original condition.

Another PCC located

What once was lost, now is found. I stumbled across a couple of photos taken in 2015 of TTC 4434, a PCC car which I had thought was scrapped back around 2011. It seems to have joined a motley collection of railway and other equipment on private land just south of Langford, New York, which is about 20 miles south of Buffalo in rural western New York. The car even shows up on a Google Street View image from 2011, keeping company with a few cabooses and freight cars.

Car 4434 is a pretty standard Toronto PCC car, built by St. Louis in 1949 as one of 100 class A-7 cars. It was retired sometime during the 1980s, though I'm not sure precisely when, and at some point made its way to Springville, New York - near its current site in Langford - where it was turned into an ice cream stand called "A Streetcar Named Dessert." This apparently went out of business during the recession; around 2010 or 2011 the car was removed, as described at this website, and thought to be scrapped.

Well, apparently that wasn't the case. As of two or three years ago, at least, it's on private property and evidently being preserved along with other assorted items. So it's back on the list.