Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Last Wilkes-Barre streetcar salvaged

News comes via WNEP-TV that the body of the last streetcar from Wilkes-Barre Railways, car 790, has been retrieved from its longtime home inside of a house in Dallas, PA. The car has been acquired by a recently-formed group called Anthracite Trolleys Inc which has moved the car to a warehouse in nearby Swoyersville for storage. The stated intention of ATI is to restore the car to operating condition and donate it to the Electric City Trolley Museum in nearby Scranton, which seems a laudably selfless goal.

WPR 790 has now been added to the PNAERC list. It was earmarked for preservation last year but typically I make changes to the list based on the physical location of the car rather than its ownership on paper. This car is pretty historic, not only because it's the last car from Wilkes-Barre but also because it's the last surviving car from the Eastern Pennsylvania Railway (aka East Penn Railway) which ran cars in Pottsville and Mauch Chunk until 1932 and owned car 790 before WPR did. The car's design strongly resembles Boston Type 5 cars, which were also built for Reading, though without the angular ends seen in Boston. Photos show that the car will need some significant rebuilding, including closing up of at least one door cut into its side, but as car bodies go it isn't unusually incomplete and it even retains a fair bit of WPR paint.

1 comment:

  1. This car was mentioned in Railpace Magazine as having been found and the groups intended restoration of it. Another truly amazing find, reminds me of the many carbodies I was shown by the late Ben Minnich during a "chicken cooping" expedition we took in 1992.

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