CRANDIC 55 off the list

Thanks to Bob Harris, who has related the news that Cedar Rapids & Iowa City (CRANDIC) 55, a steeplecab formerly preserved at the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville, has been scrapped for parts. The first photo was taken on Thursday the 26th, the second late on Friday the 28th.

CRANDIC 55 was built in 1926 by Detroit United, which ran it until 1928 when it went from being DUR 2007 to Eastern Michigan Railway 2007. In 1935 when EMR quit, the locomotive was sold to CRANDIC which ran it until the wires came down in the 1950s. It sat at the CRANDIC shop until the late-1960s, when it was spotted by Indiana traction fans who bought it and moved it to the nascent Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication in Noblesville, later to become ITM.

Though complete, the locomotive was deteriorated when it arrived in Noblesville and it never ran there. Its condition gradually worsened over four decades of benign neglect and by the time ITM was evicted from its site in 2018 the locomotive looked like this. Nobody stepped forward to attempt to save CRANDIC 55 but it's fortunate that it didn't simply become nails and razor blades (as did other equipment in comparable condition). Instead, a couple of different groups including Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company purchased the locomotive and moved it off-site to be stripped for parts. Components from the steeplecab will go to help make Union Traction 437 and other cars complete.