Orange Empire updates

Many thanks to Chris Baldwin of the Orange Empire Railway Museum, who has sent a series of updates on their equipment. These are all changes from the previous status of the listed cars.

Recently-acquired LAMR 144, recently-overhauled LARy 525, and LARy PCC 3001 are all now listed as "operated occasionally." Muni 171 and LAMTA 3165, which in the past saw occasional use, are now "displayed operable." PE Birney 331, PE office car 1299, and LATL standard cars 1423, 1450, and 1559 are now officially out of service and are listed as "displayed inoperable" (formerly they'd been listed as "operated occasionally" or "displayed operable"). Similarly, PE "Blimp" 314 is now out of service but is in storage. LATL PCC 3100 and LARy 1201 are now seeing more use and the status of both cars has been changed to "operated often."

There are a few more substantive changes than switches to whether a car is judged operational or how often it operates. PE steeplecab 1624 is now undergoing restoration, starting with an interior paint job and some wiring and electrical systems repair. The locomotive has been in rough shape for years but it's complete and an excellent candidate for full restoration. LARy 665 is another car that is now under restoration; this longtime regular service car has gone into the shop for a general overhaul.

Longtime regular service car PE 717, a "Hollywood" car that for years was painted fancifully in a "Valley Seven" livery but was more recently returned to as-built colors, has been put into storage following an incident that caused some damage. The car is operational but requires repairs before going back into public operation. Marty Bernard photo.

And LA car 1435, shown above in a photo from about a year ago, has been sold to an individual and moved off-property for preservation. This car was acquired as a body and is a duplicate (triplicate?) of two other complete cars in the OERM collection so it was not intended to be kept at the museum. I'm working on tracking down where it went. UPDATE: thanks to John Smatlak and Gary Starre from OERM, who relate that car 1435 has been transferred to the Riverside County Fairgrounds in Indio, where the plan is to cosmetically restore it and place it on display. EDIT: Update here

Five Mile Beach Electric open car to be restored

From this press release comes the news that Five Mile Beach Electric 20, one of four open cars preserved from the FMBE and the only one currently in "car body" condition, has been donated by former owner Wildwood Trolley to Liberty Historic Railway. The former organization acquired the car something like 25-30 years ago and since then had stored it in a building in Wildwood, but early plans to restore the car collapsed and it had simply been in dead storage for many years. The car hasn't just been donated to LHR, however: that organization has shipped it to Gomaco in Iowa to be restored. The scope of the rebuild isn't clear from the press release - it's not obvious whether this is intended to be an operational restoration or a more limited cosmetic one - but it's very encouraging that significant resources are being put into this car. Many thanks to Bill Wall for bringing this to my attention.

LHR has now expanded its collection of streetcars from zero to two in a matter of months, having acquired the body of Trenton Street Railway 288 - a rare car which makes FMBE 20 look like a gem - in late 2018. Car 288, which is fairly significant, has been stabilized and tarped. Car 20 is also pretty historic in its own right and stands to be the only FMBE car preserved in the Garden State.

UPDATE: This article was posted on February 1st in the Cape May County Herald stating that some $300,000 had been donated towards the restoration of FMBE 20 and, moreover, that LHR's plan is for an operational restoration of car 20. Evidently the intention is to operate it at an as-yet-nonexistent railway museum in Boonton, the current home of the United Railroad Historical Society.

H&F car relocated in Myersville

Thanks to Bill Wall, who has forwarded along a link (here) to some photo and information regarding Hagerstown & Frederick 150. The last I'd heard of this car, in May, it had been acquired by the City of Myersville, MD and had presumably been moved to the city's Harp Park. The link confirms that this is the case and contains some current (as of the move, which I believe was roughly a year ago) photos of the car including the one above. This same web page also includes some detailed plans for the new town library, which will include car 150 as a display piece within a room at the back of the library. It sounds like a very impressive plan and one that will ensure the car's continued preservation and accessibility to the public.

As late as the H&F lasted - the mid-1950s - and as popular as it was with traction fans, not a single car from the line was preserved intact. There are only three bodies around, all in roughly comparable condition: car 150, a decidedly non-H&F-standard streetcar built for Columbia, SC (and the only surviving car from that southern city); homebuilt box motor number 5; and car 168, the only classic H&F combine still around. All three are on display along the old H&F itself but car 150 will soon be the only one with an indoor home.