North Shore car removed from list

Thanks to Justin Birchfield, who posted the above photo (and a few others) online recently depicting the current sad status of Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 154. This car is/was the oldest extant North Shore Line passenger car, part of the line's first order for steel cars placed in 1915 with Brill. It ran until the NSL was abandoned in 1963 and then spent about four years traveling around Indiana on railroad excursions organized by the Anderson Railroad Club. Around 1967 it went to the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington, where it was made operational and for roughly a decade saw regular use.

But ORM's fortunes began declining quickly after a membership schism in 1975 and car 154 was one of the victims. Its condition had deteriorated badly by the early 2000s and it was put up for sale by ORM in 2004. There were a few on-again, off-again deals to sell it but it wasn't until the Grass Lake Historical Society in Grass Lake, Michigan stepped in during 2016 that the car actually left Worthington. That year it was moved to Grass Lake, stripped for parts for Michigan Electric 29, and the body dumped on private property outside of town. In 2017 the GLHS transferred car 29, and presumably car 154 as well, to the Lost Railway Museum.

While car 154 has remained on PNAERC, at this point - given the time that has passed since it was parted out and the obviously quite thorough job that was done of stripping the car - it doesn't seem like the car stands any better chance of ultimate preservation than any other car body abandoned on private land. As such, I've decided to remove it from the PNAERC list.