Cars on the move

There are two cars on the PNAERC list that have recently moved. The first is Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453, pictured above in a photo taken earlier today. As noted on our sister blog, this 1946 interurban car was recently sold to the Illinois Railway Museum by the Electric City Trolley Museum. ECTM acquired it back in 2009 from Trolleyville as part of the consortium effort to distribute the collection of that organization when it went defunct, but after the car was moved to Scranton in early 2010 it was simply held in storage. For various reasons it was preserved but was not the focus of restoration work, and recently ECTM began eyeing the car's indoor storage spot as potential home for another car owned by that organization but stored off-site. With its addition to the IRM collection, that museum now owns ten CA&E cars evenly split between wood and steel cars, more than half of all the CA&E cars in preservation. And as a matter of trivia, car 453 is the first car sold as part of the 2009 consortium effort to have changed owners in the time since.

The other car that has recently moved is Lackawanna MU club car 2454, owned by the Whippany Railway Museum in New Jersey. While its ownership hasn't changed, the car has for several years been located in Boonton where it has been undergoing a monumental restoration effort courtesy of contractor Star Trak. That restoration job - I would it's say by far the most extensive ever done to a Lackawanna MU car - concluded earlier this year and photos posted on Facebook show that the car has now been sent on to the WRM site. Unfortunately it still has some boarded-up windows owing to a nasty vandalism incident in Boonton back in April but hopefully that damage is fixed soon. The car looks to be a real showpiece.