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.