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!