PCC cars for sale

The Seashore Trolley Museum has announced on their website that they are putting a total of nine PCC cars up for sale (along with some buses). The cars are divided into two categories: single-ended cars built for Boston, of which there are three, and double-ended cars built for Dallas and later sold to Boston, of which there are six.

The single-ended cars are MBTA 3037, MBTA 3069, and MBTA 3174. All three were already listed on the PNAERC roster as "not accessioned" thus it is no shock that they're now being formally offered for sale. Cars 3037 and 3069 (the latter shown above in a photo from hopetunnel.org) were both built by Pullman-Standard in 1944 and are duplicates of car 3127, which is part of Seashore's historic collection. Car 3037 has been tarped in recent years while car 3069 has been displayed atop the "highway monster," Seashore's streetcar-hauling tractor-trailer rig, as an exhibit piece. Car 3174 was built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 and is duplicated by car 3221 in the Seashore collection It too has been tarped in recent years if I'm not mistaken. Cars 3069 and 3174 have been at Seashore for 35 years now while 3037 arrived later and has been in Kennebunkport since 1994.

And then there are six Dallas double-ended PCC cars, all of them built by Pullman-Standard in 1945. Four of them - cars 3328, 3331, 3338, and 3344 - were already listed on the roster as being for sale. These are cars that were acquired by Seashore in 1985 (except for 3338, which was acquired in 1994 from a short-lived preservation group) for the purpose of resale. They've been shopped around to various transit operators and heritage lines on and off for a few decades now but with no takers yet.

The other two cars are 3327 and 3343, both of which were converted into work cars and arrived at Seashore in 1999. These two cars have not been listed as deaccessioned, so the decision to sell them is new information. Both had large equipment doors cut into the middle of the car body, not to mention interior modification, so they'd need backdating work to turn them back into passenger cars.

As with the single-ended cars, Seashore has examples of Dallas double-enders that they are keeping in their historic collection, both in passenger (Dallas 608 - later MBTA 3342 - in original colors and car 3340 in Boston livery) and in work car (line car 3332) configuration. Thus, this proposed thinning of the collection won't remove anything particularly unique from the Seashore fleet.

Well that's embarrassing

Back in March, I got an email from Joe Sharretts that pointed out a mistake on the PNAERC roster. It took me a little while to get to the bottom of it (many thanks to Joel Salomon and Charles High for providing more information) but over the weekend they confirmed that my listings for Red Arrow cars at the Middletown & Hummelstown have been incorrect for years. And it's not a minor thing either: the M&H has two "80-series" Red Arrow cars, but my roster has long listed three of them there. One of these three cars on the list hasn't actually existed since it was scrapped in 1982.

So what in the world happened? Until now the three 80-series cars on my list were car 77, car 83, and car 86. There's no question around car 77; it was apparently sold to the M&H in 1982 and in recent years has had one end on jack stands with a truck pulled out (photo here). The issue comes with cars 83 and 86. Apparently, when the M&H decided to buy Red Arrow cars, they purchased 77 and 86. However at the last minute someone - whether at the M&H or at SEPTA - decided that car 86 had some damage and that car 83, which I guess hadn't been sold, would be a better car to get. So the numbers were swapped. Car 83 was hastily painted up as car 86, while car 86 briefly acquired the number 83 before it was scrapped. At least, from what I'm told that's what's going on... hopefully I'm not getting this backwards!

So car 83 is the second 80-series car at the M&H; it's pictured at the top of this post in a Connor Frasier photo from here and if you look closely you can see that its fleet number appears to have been altered at some point. In retrospect that's part of what caused the confusion: depending on which side or end of the car you were looking at, its number either looked more like "83" or more like "86" so I thought that I was just seeing photos of different cars. Oops. Well, at least the mistake is corrected now. We regret the error.

Trolleyville alumni newsletter

Following the return of Shaker Heights 18 to operation at IRM, the good news for Trolleyville alumni continues to roll in. This past weekend, Iowa Southern Utilities 1 was made operational at the Connecticut Trolley Museum for the first time since it left Ohio. The above photo was published on their Facebook page (no log-in required). The car, a single-truck line car rebuilt from a streetcar dating all the way back to 1892, required some wiring and roof work to be made runnable.

With recent progress on ex-Trolleyville cars (a third Trolleyville car is also likely to run in the coming months for the first time since it left Ohio), and given that it's now been just over a decade since the Great Dispersal of the Trolleyville collection that was coordinated by Branford's Bill Wall, I figured it was time for an alumni report. What ended up happening to all of the equipment from Trolleyville?

Connecticut Trolley Museum
ISU 1 - this line car has been stored under cover since 2010 and has just been made operational
CA&S 101 - stored indoors since 2010, it was vandalized by copper thieves in 2012 and has not run at CTM
AE&C 303 - stored indoors and operated on occasion, though its large size makes it unwieldy for regular use at CTM

Fort Smith Trolley Museum
CTUSU 9 - the more complete of two Veracruz open cars owned by FSTM, this car is said to be undergoing restoration work

Fox River Trolley Museum
SHRT 304 - stored indoors in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 458 - currently stored inside and the subject of a major re-roofing project

Illinois Railway Museum
SHRT 18 - the last car to leave Cleveland (in 2013), stored tarped until 2016, just made operational
CTUSU 19 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 36 - restored to operation mid-2010s, operated on a regular basis
GCRTA 63 - stored indoors since 2016, made operational but unrestored and not currently in use
CA&E 319 - restored early-2010s, operated on a regular basis
CA&E 409 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 451 - undergoing restoration work to as-built condition, work updates here
CA&E 453 - the only extant Trolleyville car to change hands post-2010; at Electric City Trolley Museum 2010-2019, moved to IRM in 2019, now stored indoors awaiting restoration
CA&E 460 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis

National Capital Trolley Museum
Blackpool 606 - British "Boat Car" not on the PNAERC roster, in good condition and operable
TTC 4602 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis

New York Museum of Transportation
CTS 021 - stored indoors in good condition and in use

Northern Ohio Railway Museum
GCRTA 172 - stored outdoors in fair condition
SHRT 303 - undergoing restoration including heavy work on the end of the car
CRC 1225 - stored indoors in good condition
SHRT OX - stored indoors in good condition

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
CSR 2227 - restored to operation early-2010s, operated on a regular basis
PRys 4145 - left Cleveland in mid-2009 before the rest of the collection was dispersed; in good condition and operated on a regular basis
TR&L "Toledo" - stored indoors in good condition, some restoration work has been done

Seashore Trolley Museum
GCRTA 113 - stored outside since 2010 in moderate condition
CRC 2365 - tarped and in outside storage since 2010

Cars lost since 2010
SHRT 71 - Pullman PCC car in poor condition, sold to Electric City 2009, scrapped for parts at NORM in 2010
SHRT 76 - Pullman PCC car in poor condition, sold to Electric City 2009, scrapped for parts at NORM in 2010
CA&S 100 - Iowa box motor in poor condition, was sold to PTM to strip for parts. Some components are slated to go to the parlor car "Toledo."
MBTA 3334 - this Dallas double-end PCC was stored at IRM by owner McKinney Avenue from 2009 until 2015, when it was moved to Dallas. MATA ended up scrapping it in 2017.

Overall the Trolleyville collection has fared extremely well, which is fitting given the good condition of most of the pieces when they were in North Olmsted and Cleveland. Of the 31 electric cars listed here, only four were scrapped. All but three of the remaining cars are currently stored under cover and 14, or more than half of the extant cars, are currently operational with a further four (at least) the subject of active restoration work.

Corrections are welcomed. This doesn't count electric cars that left Trolleyville before the Great Dispersal like AE&FRE 306 at IRM or GCRTA 163 at ORM nor does it count a couple of steam railroad cabooses that found new homes in 2010.

A couple of updates

Here are a couple of updates of news items that have popped up in recent days. First, as reported on our sister blog Hicks Car Works, Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 18 (shown above) is now operational at the Illinois Railway Museum. Restoration work on the car is ongoing and repainting into 1940s "bankers colors" with correct lettering is planned. This was the last Trolleyville car to leave Cleveland. After the Trolleyville collection was dispersed in 2010, car 18 was stored on the Cleveland RTA for another three years in the hopes that it would end up displayed in the city. That didn't happen, though, and it was acquired by IRM in 2013. It's now one of three operating Shaker Heights center-door cars, joining car 12 at NORM and car 1227 at Seashore.

And in other news, El Paso PCC car 1510 is evidently for sale according to this post on Facebook (no log-in required). The car, built in 1937 as San Diego Electric Railway 517, was sold into private ownership in 1986 and has served as a couple of different retail shops in its longtime home at the corner of 3rd & Mesa in El Paso. While its interior has obviously been stripped out, it's likely that the car's structure is relatively sound, though it's hard to say for sure whether it's had any extra holes cut into it. From appearances it also retains its trucks and, most likely, at least some of its electrical equipment.

Industrial locomotive on the chopping block

A recent Facebook post here (no log-in required) states that Phelps-Dodge 15, the diminutive locomotive shown in the photo above from the Facebook post, is to be scrapped unless a purchaser can be found. A comment made by the poster of the original notice suggests that the locomotive's owner, Old Pueblo Trolley, is short of funds and that the locomotive is being disposed of to raise cash. Presumably its marginal usefulness - besides being an industrial locomotive, it's also designed to operate on 250 volts and couldn't run alongside the foreign streetcars OPT has run in the past - also plays a role.

The locomotive is one of four identical homebuilt "calcine motors" from the P-D Douglas Works still in existence. Locomotives identical to this one are also preserved in Douglas, Phoenix, and Apache Junction. As such its loss would not be a significant historical blow. Still, it would be a shame to lose a complete 1906 industrial locomotive so hopefully it ends up somewhere intact - and hopefully OPT is not forced to further thin its collection due to the current crisis.