San Diego 502 moves to Rio Vista

 

Many thanks to Bill Wulfert, who forwarded me some photos showing the move of San Diego Electric Railway 502 to the Western Railway Museum. I don't have permission to post those photos publicly, so the above shot of the car taken within the last few years is from Railfan & Railroad. This is the culmination of a fundraising effort, largely online I believe, held by WRM over the past year or two to purchase and move this car.

SDER 502 was part of San Diego's first order for PCC cars and was among the earliest orders for PCC cars; of production PCC cars in preservation (say that eight times fast!), only Brooklyn 1001 and Chicago 4021 are from earlier orders, though El Paso 1517 started life as SDER 501 and would have been built alongside 502. A total of 13 cars from this order were preserved, actually, due to many of San Diego's cars finding a second life in El Paso that kept them around for decades after most air-electric PCC cars had gone to scrap.

Car 502 became El Paso 1500 in 1950 and ran in that city into the 1970s, being stored after the system there shut down. In 1986 the car returned home and to the ownership of the San Diego Electric Railway Association. Unfortunately during its time in San Diego it was damaged by fire, and in 1996 the car was sold to Tahoe Valley Lines and moved to northern California. It was owned by TVL until this year. It is the only air-electric PCC cars in the WRM collection, though it does join slightly newer "patent evasion" streamliner Muni 1003 which has many similarities to early PCC cars.

Postcard from Argentina - UPDATED

Many thanks to Stephen Cobb from Ipswich, UK for sending along some photos of electric locomotives preserved by Ferroclub Argentino, a rail preservation organization based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These photos were taken in 2007 and they're some of the better photographs I've seen of these locomotives.

Ferrocarril General Urquiza 950 was built in 1920 by Baldin-Westinghouse. It was part of an order for a company called Central Limones that never actually took delivery of the steeplecabs they ordered. So the locomotives sat around for a couple of years until B-W could find buyers for them. This one was sold to the Pacific Electric in 1923 and became PE 1590. In 1951 it was sold to General Urquiza Railways in Argentina. Unfortunately I have very little idea of when it was retired from service and acquired by Ferroclub.

General Urquiza 951 was built at about the same time as 950 and was also part of the same order intended for Central Limones. Like 950, this locomotive was sold to the PE in 1923, where it became number 1591. It was sold in 1951 alongside 1590 for use in South America.

General Urquiza 952, visible right behind 951 in the above two photographs, has a slightly different history. It was built by B-W in 1927 for Red River Lumber in California. It ran for RRL until 1944, when it was sold to Central California Traction as their number 24. After only a few years, it was sold in 1947 to the Pacific Electric, where it became PE 1592. It barely spent more time with PE and was sold in 1951, after only four years, for use in Argentina.

One intriguing aspect of these locomotives is that I believe all of them have trucks, motors, and even control that was salvaged from ex-PE 1100-series cars. For whatever reason (maybe simply because they had more of them on hand) the General Urquiza Railway seemed to prefer the cast trucks and GE PC control on the 1100s to the Baldwin trucks and WH equipment that came with these locomotives. There's one (at least) ex-1100 still around, General Urquiza 3140 (presumed to be ex-PE 1140), which is on display in a small town some 200 miles from Buenos Aires. Even though it's stripped you might be able to make it mechanically complete using a set of equipment off of one of these steeplecabs.

Thanks again to Stephen for sending in these photos!

UPDATE: Stephen has sent along additional photos and information from Argentina and from his trip there. He writes:

I have attached photos of the other 4 which survive (or did in 2007) one of which is certainly an interesting one to try and work out what it actually is. - #907, #908, #954 and a rusty wreck. 

The biggest problem is the lack of material, either published or available on the internet about railways in Argentina in general. Presumably there are Spanish language books on the subject locally, but they don’t seem to travel very far. There is a listing of Argentine locos that was published in the UK about 20 years ago, but it commands a high price as it is long out of print. I’ve never actually seen a copy of it, though one of the people who was on the 2007 trip had access to one when we returned.

Apart from the F.C.Urquiza that had the PE equipment, there were two other lines in Buenos Aires that operated electric locomotives in the past:

FERROCARRIL OESTE

They operated a line in a tunnel under the city centre to reach the docks area and obtained a couple of Baldwin-Westinghouse boxcabs in the early 1920’s to work freight trains. They were broad gauge locos with 3rd rail and overhead capability. One of these – 2002, the one in the photo – is/was “preserved” somewhere (certainly as late as 1990) in Argentina, but I haven’t found if it still exists. There was a lot of elderly material “stored” that we found on our 2007 trip that most people wouldn’t be aware of unless you actually visited the buildings in question. 

FERROCARRIL CENTRAL DE BUENOS AIRES

This standard gauge operator obtained 5 steeple-cab electric locos from Dick, Kerr, in Preston, UK, in 1907 (#1-#5) and they were used for freight services over the City tramway network. Another 3 were constructed by the Company themselves, presumably using parts supplied from the UK (#6-#8) This article I found online gives more details...

https://buenosaireshistoria.org/juntas/ferrocarriles-en-la-ciudad-los-trenes-por-las-calles/

From information subsequently found after the trip to Argentina in 2007, three of these locos survived in service as late as 1966 – presumably latterly on the F.C.Urquiza lines.

At Lynch, there is a loco numbered #907, which has a rather ungainly boxcab body, and its numbering suggests it is one of this class of electrics, heavily rebuilt.

The local Tramway preservation group (AAT) members have restored another one - #908 - to its original condition and it was, in 2007, on loan to Metrovias in Buenos Aires to shunt Metro cars at their Polvorin depot, which, conveniently, is where they run their heritage tramway trips from on the street-running depot access tracks from the underground A line Metro.

Also at Lynch, though whether it is part of their collection, I don’t know, , was a very decrepit shell of a steeple cab electric. It was the other side of the running lines and by an area of shanty housing, so close inspection was not encouraged!

That may well be the third loco that survived to 1966, again, heavily rebuilt from its original format. I’ve not found any photos of that style body design anywhere online.

THE ODD LOCO....

The other loco at Lynch, #954, is rather more interesting/confusing, depending on your point of view.  It has a body style in line with the PE 951/952 locos, but it does look a bit more “homemade”.

The strange thing is that the 2 Argentine online sites I found that actually mention this loco, claim it is descended from PE #1599 in some form, I.e. the comments on this image..

http://busarg.com.ar/fotogaleria/displayimage.php?album=72&pos=67

There is a Swiss based website that says more or less the same thing (in English) though it rambles off in terms that don’t make much sense!

I found photos of PE #1599 online and apart from being a steeple-cab, the trucks are totally different.

There appears to be a discrepancy between what is recorded in the US as to what the Argentines bought and what they say were bought from the US which doesn’t help!!

I agree with Stephen that if 954 does have any origins with PE 1599, then there's not much original left! It's possible that it got trucks from PE 1100s like a couple of the other locomotives got. -Frank

Piscataway update - corrected

I'd like to extend my thanks to Marc Lipkin of the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society for sending along a series of corrections, updates, and photos pertaining to the NJERHS collection of traction equipment from the Garden State. I also want to thank Bill Wall of Branford for submitting some notable corrections to the initial post.

First off, Marc pointed out that some corrections and updates were needed. The PNAERC roster formerly listed Public Service Coordinated Transport ownership of several pieces of equipment going back to the 1910s, when in fact PSCT wasn't formed until 1928. Before then, rail operations were under the auspices of Public Service Railway. So that error has now been fixed. There was another mistake too, though, as I listed all of the Newark Subway equipment going straight from PSCT ownership to New Jersey Transit ownership in 1971. In fact, Marc pointed out that NJT wasn't formed until 1979 and didn't assume ownership of the subway operation until 1980. From 1971 until 1980 the subway was run by Transport of New Jersey, the privately-owned successor company to PSCT. (Matt Nawn has since written in to confirm the 1971-1980 tenure of TNJ as the operator of the subway.) So that's now fixed too.

Then we get into the more "update" type stuff. Marc informed me that a total of eight cars are owned by NJERHS (and not by United Railway Historical Society, an umbrella group that has a hand in coordination but does not hold title to any of these cars). Of these, six are stored in what is now the NJERHS "home base" at the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway, New Jersey. A seventh, the hulk of snow sweeper 5173, is stored at the old NJERHS site in Phillipsburg, while the eighth, snow sweeper 5246, is now back on home rails on the Newark subway (and is listed under New Jersey Transit, albeit with a notation that it is owned by NJERHS). Of the cars stored in Piscataway, as of last year four were stored inside with two (13 and 250) outside protected by shrink wrap, but due to a recent uptick in Kinki-Sharyo's business three more cars have since been shrink-wrapped and put outside. But Marc kindly sent along photos showing the current condition of the four cars inside at the end of 2019.

PSCT 2651

The pride of the NJERHS fleet is probably PSCT 2651, an archetypal Public Service car built in the company shops in 1917. It is the one car that has been kept indoors in Piscataway and has not been shrink-wrapped.

This car has been the subject of a long, intensive restoration effort, and Marc updated me on its progress. I still had the car listed as a body on trucks but that assessment is far out of date - in fact, it's been moved a short distance under its own power! The car is indeed now fitted with trucks motors, controllers, and it has its interior and roof back.

Marc sent a couple of interior photos taken last year around this time to go with the exterior shots. The car's interior can be seen to be largely complete. It's certainly an austere design, what with the wood slat bowling-alley seating. Pretty much the entire roof was removed and rebuilt as part of the restoration.

For comparison, Marc took these photos in the barn in Phillipsburg back in 2007. At the time car 2651 was on freight car shop trucks and it was missing much of its roof and many of its windows.d

New Jersey Transit 5221

NJT 5221 is a line car and general work car from the Newark subway system. It was built by Russell in 1912 for Public Service Railway. It is complete and in largely the same condition as when it left regular use on the subway.

New Jersey Transit 5223

The most distinctive of the Newark non-revenue fleet is surely NJT 5223, a general utility car that (as you may have surmised) was rebuilt from a streetcar. It started out as PSCT 2683, a 1917 home-built car virtually - or maybe completely - identical to 2651 before most of its body was lopped off in 1953 and it was given its current work car number. The third photo shows 5223 from inside its erstwhile sister car 2651, looking down its deck towards its "cab" at the far end.

PSCT 28

Many thanks to Bill Wall for a couple of corrections on this item! The car pictured in these Marc Lipkin photos is not Newark car 1, as I had supposed, but is actually car 28, which is not owned by NJERHS but rather is still owned by New Jersey Transit. This car was built for Minneapolis in 1949 as TCRT 417 and has been kept on "home rails" in Newark as an historic artifact. Kinki-Sharyo repainted the car as a training exercise.

Bill points out that while the grey is slightly off, it's pretty close, and the visor is not incorrect for this livery. Newark started putting these visors on their cars in 1970 when they still ran for PSCT and it wasn't until the mid-1970s that they started getting painted red/white/blue. This means that, while car 28 isn't the only Newark car preserved in these colors, it's the only one preserved in this late variation of the grey livery with the visor.

Many thanks to Bill, Marc, and NJERHS for sending along all of this information. I always appreciate corrections, like the PSRy>PSNJT>TofNJ>NJT details, and of course I'm very appreciative of status updates on cars like the ones in Piscataway about which not a lot tends to appear online. Thanks, Bill and Marc!

New York Transit Museum virtual ride

Bill Wall sends along an update on the replacement for the usual Christmastime "Nostalgia Train" operations on the New York City subway...

Virtual Holiday Nostalgia Train Debuts TODAY at nytransitmuseum.org!

 

Digital Program  VIRTUAL HOLIDAY NOSTALGIA TRAIN Debuts Sunday, November 29th at 10am on nytransitmuseum.org. Free  Continue the holiday tradition with a virtual step back in time! In our new Virtual Holiday Nostalgia Train experience, you can see our historic 1930s R1/9 cars take a trip from the beginning to the end of the line. Take a virtual seat on our vintage fleet, see behind-the-scenes footage of the historic train at the MTA's 207th Street Yard, and celebrate the magic of the holidays with us.  Video now available at nytransitmuseum.org/holidaysathome.

 

Watch Now

Mystery streetcar in Vicksburg

 

According to a couple of newspaper stories (here and here - the above photo is from the latter), the streetcar shown here was moved this week from its former home ensconced in a hunting club's building and has been set aside for preservation. The trouble is, I know basically nothing at all about the car.

It's from Vicksburg, Mississippi, which makes it the only electric car from that city in preservation. Judging from its appearance it was built either for Vicksburg Light & Traction, which ran the city's streetcars until 1923, or for Mississippi Power & Light, which ran them from 1923 until abandonment in 1939. But not only do I not know what the car's number is, I also don't know who built it or when. I'd say that it's got to be a single-trucker and to me it looks like a car built late-teens/early-1920s but it's not a Birney, suggesting that maybe it wasn't built by one of the Birney builders (American/Brill, St Louis, Cincinnati). Harold Cox's order list for American includes four Birneys bought secondhand by Vicksburg and hilariously numbered 145-175 by tens, but this isn't one of those.

So I need some help. I'd like to add the car to the PNAERC list but I need at least some information on it. For the time being it's evidently been moved to an old car dealership in Vicksburg on Washington Street just south of Belmont, still owned by the Long Lake Hunting Club. Time will tell what will be done with this car.

EDIT: After consulting Alan Lind's book "From Horsecars to Streamliners" it appears that Vicksburg was a repeat St Louis Car Company customer. They ordered five cars, one of which might be this one: two cars in 1913 (numbered 75 and 105), two in 1914 (numbered 115 and 125), and one in 1916 (numbered 135). All are noted as single-truck cars with 21' bodies. If the mystery car is one of these five then that would explain why it's got a Birney arrangement but isn't a Birney, as these would have just predated that design.

A 4000 for East Troy

 

The news was posted on RyPN this week that Chicago Transit Authority 4439, a standard 4000-series Chicago 'L' cars, has been moved from Grand Rapids, Michigan to the East Troy Electric Railroad. This move was mentioned on this blog a few months ago but it has now actually happened, so car 4439 has been updated with its new owner and location. The TLE&W still has a pair of ex-New York Central MU cars and an unidentified Lackawanna MU car on their roster but car 4439 was the last vestige of the Grand Rapids Electric Railway collection that had been amassed by Charley Sheets. From outward appearances the car looks to be largely complete and generally in excellent condition.

So that's one fewer owner of CTA 4000s as listed on the PNAERC roster. According to the list there are a total of 30 CTA 4000s still remaining, consisting of one "Baldy" trailer, three "Baldy" motor cars, and 26 "Plushies" (the latter category including cars like 4439). These are spread out among a total of 13 owners. Right now there are only two museums that are actually operating 4000s: East Troy and the Illinois Railway Museum. East Troy has both of their 4000s in service (4439 will give them a three-car train) while IRM has four of its six cars in operation including its "Baldy." The CTA itself, certainly not a museum, also has a pair of cars in its historic collection that see occasional use for PR purposes. A fourth organization, Fox River Trolley Museum, has a pair of 4000s undergoing heavy overhaul work, including a now-rare example of a car rebuilt with gasket-ized upper sash. It likely won't be too long before these cars are back in operation.

The remaining nine organizations are a mixed bag of museums and private owners. The Connecticut Trolley Museum owns more 4000s than anyone else except IRM, with four cars (including a "Baldy" motor car that the museum converted into a trailer), but none are in very good condition and two have been offered for sale. The Northern Ohio Railway Museum also owns three 4000s, including the last "Baldy" trailer, but its three cars are in relatively poor condition too and all have been deaccessed from the historic collection and/or offered for sale. There are two (now-rare) 4000-series work cars at the Middletown & Hummelstown, a lone car at Branford, and a lone car at the Ohio Railway Museum, all in fairly decrepit condition. The Michigan Transit Museum has a pair of 4000s, one of which is maintained in reasonably good condition and towed by a diesel as part of that organization's tourist train. And finally there are three (maybe two-and-a-half) cars in private collections: the remnants of one car at Buckeye Lake Trolley have been cut down to just the floor, one car in Indiana that is in limbo after having been rescued from the scrappers descending on the Indiana Transportation Museum in 2018, and one stored indoors in Escanaba, Michigan.

An orange by any other name...

 

A while back Chris Baldwin pointed out to me that the Orange Empire Railway Museum, which for several years has been slowly transitioning to a new name, had officially "switched over." It took me a while but I finally updated the PNAERC roster. So you'll no longer see Orange Empire listed among owners. It will now be the Southern California Railway Museum.

I've decided just to change the name of the organization (though OERM will still be listed under the "also known as" category in the organization's description). This means that searches for historical information may be slightly confusing. For instance, searching for equipment that is or was owned by SCRM brings up BCER 1225, which is listed as having belonged to SCRM from 1958 to 2005 despite the fact that the organization was known as OERM until the late 2010s and never owned car 1225 while it bore the SCRM name. But then again, OERM was actually known as the Orange Empire Trolley Museum until 1975 and I haven't listed the organization's equipment as all having changed hands at that time either.

When it comes to preservation organizations, I tend to just adopt "dba" name changes rather than creating new owners. Other examples of this are the Rockhill Trolley Museum, which used to be known as Railways to Yesterday, and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, which used to be the Arden Trolley Museum. Both have just been carried forward with their new names - you can't run a search for equipment formerly owned by the Arden Trolley Museum. One exception to this is the Fox River Trolley Museum, which was known as RELIC until 1984. In that case I've listed those as two separate owners, the reason being that the transition from RELIC (Railway Equipment Leasing and Investment Corporation) to FRTM wasn't just a name change, it was a major organization shift from the for-profit, privately-held RELIC to the nonprofit museum FRTM.

Lake Shore 73 progress

 Many thanks to Bob Harris, who has sent along photos showing recent progress on Chicago Lake Shore & South Bend 73, the only surviving wood car from the predecessor to the South Shore Line. This is a truly stunning project and has entailed a tremendous amount of rebuilding and restoration. The car being restored is pretty unique - it may be the only surviving wooden AC car, not too surprising given how few early interurban lines used AC power transmission. Since the last update, the car's copper-sheathed roof has been completed and exterior painting is now well underway.

And a late addition showing additional progress:

Milwaukee Street Railway 200 found

One of the stranger "missing streetcars" on the PNAERC list, outlined here, has been found. This one is strange because most of the cars I consider "missing" are only missing to me - people associated with the owners, or former owners, know what happened to those cars. In the case of Milwaukee Street Railway 200, though, it went missing and nobody - including its owner, East Troy Electric Railroad - knew what happened to it. Until now! ETER member Scott Patrick posted the above photo, and some others, on Facebook showing that the car has indeed turned up on the property of a man who had been somehow involved with an abortive restoration attempt about a decade ago. The car is in rough shape, essentially a skeleton sitting atop an unusual steel frame that was built c2010, but then again it wasn't much more complete when it left East Troy in 2009. It sounds like East Troy is going to move the body of car 200 back to their site and look into options for future restoration.

It's good that the car wasn't lost. As skeletal as it is, it's quite historic and may be the oldest electric car preserved in the Midwest. It was built in 1892, using an 1888 horsecar as a base, and was used as a street railway parlor car until a second rebuilding in 1907 which turned it into a hospital car (does this make it the only preserved electric railway hospital car in the country?). Then in 1919 its slow downgrading process continued and it became a tool car, finally leaving the roster in 1931.

ConnCo 855 returns home

 Many thanks to Bill Wall for passing along news, and the photos shown here, of Connecticut Company 855's return home to Branford.

Above the car is shown passing East Haven Town Hall; below it's passing the East Haven Green, while below that it's seen being unloaded at the foot of River Street and shown through the windows of Sprague.

Car 855 was built by Wason in 1905 as Consolidated Railway 512. It was retired and went to Branford in 1947, but as a duplicate in the collection (identical car 865, which is fully restored, is also preserved at the museum) it was soon stripped of parts and its body was placed on the ground. Over the years car 855 saw a few different uses but in 1984 it was cosmetically restored on the outside and placed on display nearby in East Haven outside of the Trolley Square shopping mall. In 1993 it moved again, this time to a spot in front of the Holiday Inn where it served as the East Haven Visitors Center until recently. It has now returned to Branford for the first time in more than 35 years.

Correction and additional information: Bill has written to point out that car 855 has been plinthed on the piece of track shown above, not in River Street (where Branford's line terminates) but alongside it. The car will serve as a welcome sign and landmark for visitors, not to mention an impressive photo op. Its years in various uses have given it a lot of modifications (including, among other things, a metal roof and vinyl windows and siding!) so while Branford is definitely keeping it around, it is not being preserved as an historic artifact.

Finally, as an unrelated aside, the recently-discovered Phoenix streetcar body mentioned here has indeed been moved to the Arizona Street Railway Museum's (aka Phoenix Trolley Museum's) storage site as shown here. The car had already been added to the PNAERC list.

The second sweeper

Thanks to Bill Wall, who pointed out this post from the SubChat message board. It appears - improbably - that this week two snow sweepers left the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. Following the relocation of C127 to Scranton, the other sweeper that was being stored by BSM for someone else left Baltimore too. This second sweeper was New Jersey Transit 5246, a handsome double-truck Russell-built example built in 1921.

Car 5246 has quite a history: it was built new for the Trenton & Mercer County, making it the only survivor from that line* and a very rare survivor from the network of small New Jersey suburban lines. In 1934, following the abandonment of streetcars in Trenton, the sweeper went to the Third Avenue Railway System in New York. It only ran there 14 years before being resold again to Toronto, which operated it until 1973. At that time it was brought back to its home state of New Jersey by New Jersey Transit, the purpose being to replace NJT 5173 as the Newark Subway's snow sweeper after that car burned to its frame in 1972. (The frame of 5173, though, is still intact and the car - such as it is - is considered to be on the roster of the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, or NJERHS.) Sweeper 5246 was stored - and occasionally used, I guess - on the Newark Subway system until it was transferred to the Friends of New Jersey Transportation Heritage Center (FNJTHC) in 2011. Without anywhere to put it, that group sent it to Baltimore for storage.

Car 5246 is still evidently owned by FNJTHC and supposedly the original plan was to move it from Baltimore to the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway, where other cars owned by them and NJERHS are stored. But there was said to be no room in the inn, so 5246 has now ended up back home on the Newark system for interim storage. It's now one of two cars listed under NJ Transit, joining a lone PCC that was kept as an historic relic but has not, as far as I know, seen use. And BSM, for its part, now no longer has anyone else's equipment on its property.

*Sweeper 5246 is the only car listed on the PNAERC list as ex-Trenton & Mercer County, however I'm not certain that's strictly correct. The only information I can find on T&MC's corporate history is here and it implies that T&MC was basically an operating company, with equipment owned by various subsidiaries. If that's true then Trenton Street Railway 288 would also be ex-T&MC... but to be consistent I'd likely need to change the ownership history of either 288 or 5246. Anyone know the story?

Snow sweeper relocates

 

It has been reported on RyPN that Philadelphia snow sweeper C127 has finally, after several years of waiting, been relocated to Scranton and has arrived at the Electric City Trolley Museum. The sweeper is shown above in a photo posted in the aforementioned thread.

The car in question is one of eight surviving double-truck sweepers built by Brill for Philadelphia Rapid Transit in 1923 (though despite all being essentially identical four of the eight - C127 not among them - were built as plows and soon rebuilt as sweepers). Sweeper C127 was sold to Ed Mitchell in Uniontown, PA in 1974 and was stored on his farm - most of the time under cover - until he died and his collection was sold in 2011. "Sold" may not be the right word because out of maybe 10 or 12 pieces of traction equipment he owned, the only one not to get scrapped was C127. Instead it was purchased by ECTM but, due to a lack of storage space, it was transported to Baltimore. For the last nine years it has been stored (still under cover) at BSM awaiting an indoor berth in Scranton.

The sale of Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453 to IRM last year opened up that berth, so C127 is now residing with its owners. It joins identical car C128 in Scranton; that sweeper came via the Trolley Valhalla and Buckingham Valley groups and appears rough but complete. I'm not certain what the museum's plans for the two sweepers are. ECTM has managed to acquire a pair of correct trucks from sweeper C124, which had been preserved in Grand Rapids, Ohio and was scrapped in 2018, and these trucks have already been regauged to standard gauge so that will allow C127 to be placed on live rail.

So C127 is now listed under ECTM and not under BSM (I typically list cars based on their physical location with a notation about ownership). BSM isn't sweeper-less, though; in fact of the eight preserved Philly sweepers the only one currently operational is owned by BSM, car C145, which is now undergoing a major restoration project to return it to original condition.

What once was lost now is found

There's news on two cars formerly considered "lost," though in somewhat different circumstances. First off, a big thanks to Chris Baldwin for forwarding along photos taken by Christopher Skidmore of NJ Transit PCC 24. This car (a standard ex-Minneapolis car built in 1947) has been considered something of a mystery since late 2018, when it was spotted on a truck trailer westbound in Pennsylvania. Well it has now turned up about as far west as a truck will go.

It's stored at Carlos Guzman Inc, a painting contractor in Signal Hill, CA near Long Beach. This company has worked with San Diego Vintage Trolley, Muni, and Orange Empire. So I'm not certain whether the car is owned by one of those organizations (though I don't think OERM is involved) or whether the contractor acquired the car "on spec" for some reason. Update: Chris has confirmed that Carlos Guzman Inc does not own the car; nor does OERM or San Diego Vintage Trolley, with which the contractor has worked in the past. It sounds like it's being held for use with some sort of public art display, so we will see what transpires with that.

And while we're in the southwest, a second car thought lost has been found. Phoenix Street Railway 509, which was assumed to have been scrapped back in 1948 when PSR was abandoned, turned up when it was suddenly offered as a donation to the Arizona Street Railway Museum (aka Phoenix Trolley Museum). The announcement is here (no log-in required) - thanks go to Wesley Paulson and Olin Anderson for alerting me to this. ASRM appears to have accepted the donation of the car but has not yet moved the car, so it's still somewhat in limbo, but I have added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 509 is an American Car Company-built double-truck lightweight built in 1928. It's not a Birney, but rather a fairly unusual example of a late-1920s American design that was used by a handful of cities. It's one number up from car 508 (originally 116), which is also preserved by ASRM and was largely restored in the 1980s/1990s. In fact a third car from this series, 504 (originally 108), is owned by ASRM too. It really is remarkable that four cars of two different types were saved from such a small system, but I suppose it's a testament to the climate.

Cars on the move

 

It appears that the East Troy Electric Railroad has purchased CTA 4439, shown above in a somewhat recent photo from the First & Fastest Facebook page, from its current owner, the Toledo Lake Erie & Western. This is one of the more elusive of the preserved 4000s and has been off public display for a couple of decades at least. I vaguely recall seeing it back about 20 years ago and, as the above photo suggests, it appears to be in good condition. After it left CTA in 1975, I believe it was briefly stored in Michigan City before going to the state of Michigan where it was stored by the Oakland County Parks & Recreation Commission. I have no idea why OCP&RC acquired this car nor what their plans were for it. I think (but am not sure) that they're the ones responsible for fixing it up and putting it in this green paint scheme. It later made its way to Charley Sheets' collection in Toledo, thence to Grand Rapids, OH, and into possession of the TLE&W as outlined here. I haven't changed the car's listing over to East Troy yet, as it hasn't yet physically made its way to Wisconsin, but that should just be a matter of time.

And in unrelated news, Gord McOuat has sent me the numbers of the latest two Toronto CLRV's to be acquired by Halton County. Car 4040 and car 4053 were acquired by Halton as parts sources, however the museum hasn't yet decided which two of their (now) six CLRV's will be scrapped for parts and which four will be retained. So it's quite likely that one or both of these cars may end up being retained for preservation. In any event, both cars have now been added to the PNAERC list, bringing the total number of preserved CLRV's up to 14.

Yet more CLRV's

It's time yet again to add more CLRV's to the PNAERC list. We are now up to a total of 12 CLRV's and two articulated ALRV's on the list and that's not the end of it. There are at least two more of the former type that have been acquired by Halton County (they plan on scrapping two of their six for parts but it will take time to decide which two) and there are rumors that two or three additional cars were sold in a recent auction to buyers unknown. So let's get to it.

The first contender is car 4001, one of the original 1977 prototype cars built by SIG in Switzerland. This article from December was brought to my attention pointing out that the car is being preserved by TTC itself as part of the system's historic fleet. Also being preserved by TTC is car 4089, a standard production car dating to 1979 (or maybe 1980 - delivery took place over a couple of years) and built in Canada by Hawker-Siddeley. Both cars have now been added to the PNAERC list.

Then there's a pair of cars that have been acquired by the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, car 4024 and car 4170. What does the CLRV have to do with American mining? Glad you asked! Not a thing, as far as I can tell. However AIMCM seems to be very closely intertwined with Buckeye Lake Trolley, so it seems likely that these cars are intended to fit in more with the BLT collection than with the collection of mining equipment currently shown on the AIMCM website. Right now both cars are being stored at Halton County pending movement to the states, and I've made a notation that they're owned by BLT / AIMCM.

Speaking of Halton, in addition to the two AIMCM cars they're currently hosting, and in addition to the two cars they're currently hosting that are owned by Seashore, and in addition to the two mystery cars mentioned above potentially acquired as parts sources, they've also gotten a fourth CLRV for their historic collection. It's the car pictured (while still in service last year) at the top of this post: car 4178, which in September 2019 was hand-painted in a very colorful livery by local Toronto artists. TTC asked Halton if they would be interested in preserving this admittedly unique piece and they gamely agreed, so the car is now in Rockwood and also on the PNAERC list. Thanks to Gord McOuat for passing along this update.

And finally - for the CLRV category at least - comes this article about a young man who has purchased car 4187 and is moving it to his family's farm in rural Priceville, north/northwest of Toronto. Though I usually don't list cars like this until they've physically been moved, it sounded like this was a fait accompli and with private collections like this it's not terribly likely that updates will be communicated to the preservation community at large. EDIT: I was wrong - the update is here.

But wait, there's an encore. It appears that a second ALRV - the two-car articulated version of the CLRV - has indeed been preserved by TTC, joining CLRV's 4001 and 4089 in the system's historic collection. I believe that it is car 4207, built in 1988 and withdrawn from service in mid-2019. What with the pandemic scrambling things, neither the ALRV nor the TTC's preserved CLRV's seem to have made any public appearances, but at some point they will presumably emerge to join the system's Peter Witt and its two PCC cars in excursion service.

A move and an addition

The big news for today is that the National Capital Trolley Museum has acquired DC Transit 1470 from the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke. The news was report in a Facebook post (no log-in required). Car 1470 is a standard postwar Washington DC PCC car, built in 1945 by St. Louis Car Company, and bears some of the unique features of DC postwar cars such as air-electric brakes, taller-than-normal side windows, and a prewar style windshield. It also has an unusual automatic pole-lowering device. It joins the only other DC postwar car preserved domestically, car 1540, in the NCTM collection but it is in much better condition. Despite some 45 years of outdoor display in Roanoke, car 1470 was maintained in generally good condition from all appearances and may be a good candidate for restoration to operational condition. It was always a bit of an oddball display in Roanoke and it's great to see it back home at National Capital.

This is just the latest Washington DC car to be returned to home territory from initial preservation elsewhere. It follows prewar PCC car 1430, acquired from Rockhill in 1997; center-entrance car 650, brought home from Branford in 2002; and sweeper 09, repatriated from Rockhill in 2012. Other than PCC cars sold abroad or heavily rebuilt for service elsewhere, nearly every preserved car from Washington is now preserved in or near DC. EDIT: Many thanks to Wesley Paulson of NCTM for the photos of car 1470 now included in this post.

And on an unrelated topic, I've also added a new car to the list. It's not a newly-preserved car but it has just recently come across my radar as a significant piece of traction history. The car in question is Chicago Transit Authority S314, a work car preserved at the Fox River Trolley Museum. It has recently been cosmetically restored and is apparently in use. I'd seen it before but had been under the mistaken impression that it was essentially a piece of non-traction railroad work equipment. However it turns out that, while not self-propelled, it is fully 600v-powered (including a prominently mounted D3F pump) and has quite the illustrious traction heritage. It was built by Chicago City Railway as a cab-on-flat work car, later sold to the Calumet & South Chicago, and served the Chicago Surface Lines for decades.

Interurban sleeping car for sale

A post on Facebook here (no log-in required) reports that Illinois Terminal 535 is available for sale. The photo above is from that post. Car 535 is "sort-of" one of the last three interurban sleeping cars in existence. It was built by St Louis Car Company in 1911 as coach trailer 527 (it was part of the same series as, and was originally identical to, car 518 preserved at IRM). In 1930 the car was heavily rebuilt by the IT into a 9-bedroom sleeping car, renumbered 501, and given the name "Illinois." I'm not sure how much use it saw in sleeping car service given the onset of the Depression but in 1942 it was rebuilt again. This time its bedrooms were stripped out and it was turned back into a coach trailer numbered 535. It was sold into private ownership by the IT in 1966, went to the Monticello museum in 1972, and was then sold off by that museum in 1988. No other museum was interested so the body was sold to an individual who owned the IT depot in Harristown, Illinois. The car's body has been sitting next to the Harristown depot, more-or-less on the old interurban right-of-way, ever since. Its current owner is an individual who purchased the depot property a few years back, I believe.

So in a way - if considered on the merits of its 12-year bedroom car career - car 535 is quite historic. Only two other interurban sleeping cars still exist and both (IT 504 at IRM and IPS 167 in Squamish, BC) feature sections, not bedrooms. With some mental gymnastics you could also consider this the most modern interurban sleeper ever put into service, as I'm pretty sure nobody was building interurban sleeping cars after 1930. But while it's an historic car, it's also a pretty poor candidate for preservation. Unlike the other two extant sleepers, it's far from complete even as a coach, much less a sleeping car. It's a body and a pretty badly stripped one at that. Worse, its condition is wretched - from photos it looks like the body is wracked (racked?), the roof is in very poor shape, and the interior is a mess. It looks like it would be a project just to move the car at all without it collapsing. So unfortunately it seems like a bit of a stretch that it will find a new home and long-term preservation. But I suppose time will tell.