A late loss of a curve-sider

I've got bad news for fans of Cincinnati curve-siders. Cincinnati Street Railway 2465, a typical "postage stamp" car built for that city in 1923, is gone - or at least largely gone. The car, shown above about 10-15 years ago, was acquired as a body by Gary Eubanks of Marietta, Georgia and cosmetically restored to resemble an Atlanta Northern curve-sider (see here and scroll down). The plan as of 2005 or so was to place the car in a planned building known as the Georgia Northern Building that was to be constructed in Marietta. Unfortunately the recession interceded, pausing the project and relegating car 2465 to storage. Then in 2013 Gary passed away, making the car's future even more uncertain. For the last couple of years I'd had its condition listed as "situation unknown" because I wasn't even entirely sure it was still around.

Some recent Googling has filled in the story. A new retail and restaurant development called Marietta Square Market has sprung up on the approximate site of the envisioned Georgia Northern Building. MSM also acquired the car, moving it off-site for work. It's shown in the above photo, taken in June 2018 and posted on Facebook, as a largely complete body in what looks like good structural condition (though likely without much of an interior).

But that was then, and this is now:

The photo is from this site, which chronicles in photographs the new Marietta Square Market. In fact MSM just opened yesterday, on the 28th, and seems to be quite a hit. But as for their streetcar, there's something, uh, missing. They appear to have lopped off (and presumably thrown away) about two-thirds of the car, grafting the rear end onto the front third of the car to create a kind of food stand. It's too bad, as one would think that they could have found some way to incorporate the car in its entirety into the project. But obviously that was not to be and at this point there's not enough of car 2465 left to consider it a preserved piece of equipment. It's been removed from the PNAERC list. With this the number of Cincinnati curve-siders in existence drops to six, of which three are very non-typical single-truckers from Knoxville, and the number of preserved cars from Cincinnati Street Railway drops to three.

Pittsburgh PCC mystery solved

Back in 2016, I posted this message asking for information on a pair of Pittsburgh PCC cars: 1734 and 1773. Thanks to Bruce Wells and Steve Kuznetsov, I've now got an answer on that!

It turns out that car 1734 was moved back in 2015 to a building in Ellwood City, south of its old site in New Castle, where it is now the subject of an effort to restore the car. The goal is to operate the car, possibly at a trolley museum and it is being regauged using B3 trucks from Boston. The folks working on the car are also interested in help with this, so any volunteers in the area are free to inquire about helping with car 1734. Although it's still owned by the owner of Power Superconductor Applications, the company in New Castle that was host to a small collection of Pittsburgh PCC cars until a few years ago, it's no longer at PSA and its ownership has been updated.

As for car 1773, it turns out that the car was scrapped for parts, so it has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Interested in helping solve some of these mysteries? Click here and let me know if you know the answers to any of these questions.

Dallas PCC to be disposed of

Word comes from a worker at the Middletown & Hummelstown in Pennsylvania that Boston PCC 3323, a double-ender built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 as Dallas Railway & Terminal 605, is to be scrapped in the coming weeks if another museum doesn't step forward to take it. The car is shown above in a 2002 photo; while it's complete, its condition hasn't improved any in the 17 years since the picture was taken and it suffers from the severe body rot common to preserved cars of this series. This particular car ran in Boston from 1958 until 1980, when it went to Branford; that museum traded it (and a redundant South Brooklyn box motor) to the M&H in exchange for Red Arrow 84 in 1992.

It's not clear to me whether this is envisioned to be part of a larger site cleanup or whether 3323 is the only car currently on the chopping block in Middletown. Its loss would not be of great significance, given the other eleven cars of this type extant, but it is notable that nine of those are at Seashore and a tenth is rotting away in Windber, PA. The other only car of this type in a museum other than Seashore (following the recent loss of 3334) is 3333 at Warehouse Point.

Third Avenue open car 651

Thanks to Richard Berk, who has sent in a couple of recent photos of Third Avenue Railway System 651 at the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton. This car has been the subject of a pretty monumental restoration over the years, going from a hulk to a complete body (and nearly complete car) with what would seem to be mostly new wood.

This is an old car, built by Brill in 1898 for Union Railway (though almost immediately going into the Third Avenue fleet), and sold in 1914 to Five Mile Beach Electric in Wildwood, NJ where it ran until 1945. Open cars weren't the most popular targets for resale as houses and sheds but for whatever reason several FMBE open cars, including this one, found post-retirement use in "chicken coop" form.

ECTM is currently rebuilding and regauging a pair of Brill 22 "Maximum Traction" trucks for the car. This may make car 651 unique among restored car bodies; I can't think of anywhere else in the U.S. that has sourced correct MaxTrac trucks for a restored car, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that. This pair of trucks came from Lisbon, where the tracks are 900mm gauge (a bit under 3'), so new wheel sets and a lot of new steel has been called for here. When complete, this car will be a truly stunning piece.