Toronto Suburban Railway 8

Another mystery is solved, at least to the degree it's likely to be solved. A while back I posted this piece asking for information on the car shown above, Interprovincial Railway 8, preserved at the Canadian Railway Museum. The other day I stumbled upon this photo which looked a whole lot like car 8 and it occurred to me that it might be worth sending an e-mail to Gord McOuat, general Canadian traction expert, asking about the car. Gord didn't disappoint and sent me the car's entire ownership history so far as is known.

The kicker is that it never ran on the Interprovincial Railway! Well that's embarrassing. It turns out that tidbit came from a book published back in the 1990s and was erroneous; instead the car is more properly known as Toronto Suburban Railway 8. It was indeed built in 1895 and ran for two successive street railway companies in Peterborough, Ontario before going to Toronto. When exactly that happened isn't clear; apparently open cars were banned in Toronto around 1915 so it would have been before that. It went to Gillies Brothers, a large lumber mill in Braeside, Ontario at some point around 1920 or so (the photo linked above shows it still on TSR in 1920 but obviously out-of-service) and remained there until donated to CRM for preservation in 1957 (though it was kept on the Montreal streetcar system for a few years). It most likely went to CRM along with the rest of MT's historic collection in 1963. Many thanks to Gord for this helpful information!

Kansas City Birney under restoration

Thanks to David Wilkins for forwarding along the above photo, taken by Bob O'Neil, showing Kansas City Public Service 1533. This single-truck Birney is preserved at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis and as the photo shows it is now the focus of the museum's Trolley Volunteers restoration group. This is the group within the MOT organization that previously restored St. Louis 1743, a 1946 PCC car, and before that restored St. Louis Waterworks 10. Car 1533 is an historic car and should be well-suited to their short line. Built in 1919 at the height of the Birney fad, car 1533 ran in Kansas City for a full three decades, later than Birneys ran in most larger cities. When it was retired in 1949, it was acquired by the nascent National Museum of Transport (now MOT) and brought to St. Louis intact. Over the years it was maintained in pretty good condition, though in recent years it suffered a collapsed platform knee at one end which resulted in some damage to one platform (see below photo, taken in 2009).

But the MOT restoration crew is obviously rebuilding the framing of this platform and it looks like they will be rehabbing the rest of the car as well. Besides being the only Birney, and the only Kansas City car, at MOT, car 1533 is also in the best shape of the four pre-PCC cars from Kansas City that are in museums. It will be a great addition to the MOT operating fleet when it's done.

Capital Transit sweeper running again

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for forwarding along a good piece of news: Capital Transit 09, an 1899 McGuire-Cummings snow sweeper preserved at the National Capital Trolley Museum in Wheaton, Maryland, is now running again after several years out of service. NCTM members had to repair some of the car's resistance grids but it's back in service as shown in the above and below photos forwarded by Wesley.

Car 09 is one of seven hometown cars preserved at NCTM but it's the only piece of non-revenue equipment. When retired in 1962 the car was sold to Louis Buehler of Railways to Yesterday (now the Rockhill Trolley Museum) and it was moved to Orbisonia to join the growing collection of traction equipment there. Following the catastrophic fire at NCTM in 2003, in which two Washington DC snow sweepers - one of them car 07, an identical sister to 09 - were destroyed, a plan was hatched to see car 09 returned to home territory. This plan came to fruition in 2012 when car 09 went to NCTM and in exchange Rockhill received Iowa Terminal 3, a slightly newer McGuire-Cummings sweeper that had been stored at Branford since 2005.

Wesley also sent along an interesting piece of history: the bill of sale from DC Transit in 1962 when car 09 was sold to Louis Buehler. A complete, operating, 19th-century snow sweeper went for the princely sum of $200 in those days. What a steal!

Housekeeping

As usual, I've been making changes to the PNAERC roster here and there as I go along. I'm constantly correcting date here or adding some bit of technical information there. Recently I was able to pick up a very nice book on the Edmonton Radial Railway from Keven Farrell of the Seashore Trolley Museum. This permitted me to fill in a lot of electrical, mechanical, and dimensional data for the ten preserved cars from that system. These cars all reside at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society in their hometown and make up an eclectic mix. Car 42, shown in the above photo, is one of three survivors built by St. Louis in 1912 with the relatively rare turtleback roof design and was completely restored by ERRS from chicken coop condition, complete with St. Louis 47 trucks cast and assembled by the Society.

Then at the opposite end of the continent there's the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society. Olin Anderson pointed out that cars 5221 and 5223, both Newark subway work cars in their later years, were listed on PNAERC under United Railroad Historical Society ownership but for consistency (given their location) are probably better off listed under NJERHS ownership. So I've made that change. I'm still seeking more historical information on both of these distinctive and mechanically complete, but enigmatic, cars. UPDATE: Bill Wall has kindly provided some additional information on 5221 and 5223, not only filling in some motor/truck/control details but confirming that 5223 was indeed rebuilt by PSCT in the 1950s from a standard passenger car numbered 2683. Apparently NJERHS has plans to eventually rebuild it in passenger car form, which would make it identical to car 2651, their PSCT car from the same series.

And finally, thanks to Joel Salomon who has confirmed that Philadelphia work motor W-54, which had until recently been listed on PNAERC (but as "situation unknown"), was indeed scrapped a number of years ago while still at SEPTA. It has been removed from the list.

Plans afoot for BCER 153

Of the 13 preserved pieces of equipment from British Columbia Electric Railway, surely the most elusive in recent years has been city car 153. Its body has been owned by the City of North Vancouver since the 1980s but for most (all?) of that time has been stored out of sight under the bleachers in a city park. During this time it's been cosmetically restored, with work apparently ongoing but nearing some level of completion. A recent article here includes a couple of photos of the car and a description of some of the work that has been done on it. Apparently the car is going to be fitted with Belgian trucks, though of what type I'm not certain. And there are big plans for it once cosmetic restoration is done: it is due to be moved to the not-yet-built Extraordinary Museum in the West Esplanade area of North Vancouver.

One intriguing thing the article mentions involves the car's builder: it says that it was built by Stephenson. I've always had the car listed in PNAERC as built by Brill, but it doesn't show up in Brill order lists so it makes sense that it was built by Stephenson (which was, after all, a Brill subsidiary in 1908). Sure enough, some Googling revealed this confirmation (page 121) of the car's actual builder. It's always good to get errors like this corrected! And it means that BCER 153 is the newest of the ten cars built by Stephenson known to be preserved.