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: