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.
What a shame, thank you Frank for sharing the bad news. Does the Cincinnati Curved Sider still exist I saw back in Northern Kentucky with Ben Minnich in 1992? I took some good shots of it and it was even painted in it's original livery!
ReplyDeleteLee, that is a very good question. I believe the car you're referring to is Cincinnati Street Railway 2469, which was supposed to be on private land in Union, Kentucky. Unfortunately I haven't been able to determine whether the car is still there or not. If it is, and if it is being kept around for its historic value and not simply as a shed, it would make a good addition to the PNAERC list.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, it wasn't in too bad a condition when Ben and I viewed it. We were told that they had thrown the seats into the pond at the rear of the property! I noted too that this was one of the Curved Siders that was later equipped with folding doors. Perhaps this was done for safety reasons as I think there had been an incident involving the original sliding doors on these cars.
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