Birney body added to list

I recently stumbled upon this photo on Flickr which shows a Birney on display in the dining room of the Old Spaghetti Factory in Fresno, California. Most, if not all, OSF locations feature a streetcar as a dining room centerpiece but they're a mix of (mostly poorly-done) replicas and heavily rebuilt actual cars. I've generally included examples in the latter category on the PNAERC list, as they're on display primarily as streetcars and not employed primarily as buildings themselves. The trouble has always been figuring out the histories of these cars.

Anyway, one OSF tendency I appreciate is that when they rebuild an actual car they often reapply its original fleet number. As such, for the Fresno car, it's plausible to assume that its actual in-service number was 1033. For a California location especially this brings to mind Los Angeles Railway. That's not enough by itself, but a couple of spotting features support the suggestion that this is an LARy car: it has an unusual two-channel anticlimber which most Los Angeles cars had, and it lacks the marker lights over the center windows that were typical of most Birneys. The car is lettered Fresno Traction but that's doubtful given how distinctive the Birneys built for Fresno were. So I've elected to add this car to the PNAERC list as Los Angeles Railway 1033, the fourth LA Birney and the 72nd single-truck Birney on the list. (Speaking of Birneys, the cars seem to have been very popular to use as sheds or cabins, presumably because they were easy to move. Of the 72 examples on the list only 16 were originally preserved complete and intact - five of those from the Fort Collins system. The other 56 were initially, at least, preserved as car bodies.)

And one other housekeeping item: the URL for Weakly Reporting, Bruce Wells' blog following happenings at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum and other items of note in Western Pennsylvania, has changed. Bruce has moved his blog over to Blogger due to changes with his former site host. Not too many trolley museums have a steady blog presence and Bruce's efforts are always appreciated!