Plans for the new year

News has surfaced thanks to this article that plans are afoot to move the stranded New York Central locomotives in Glenmont to a new home at the Danbury Railroad Museum. The two electrics in Glenmont (there are also two diesels and several passenger cars) are certainly historic. NYC 100, shown above, was the very first S-motor built and was outshopped in 1904 as NYC&HR 6000. It was retired in 1964 and given to the stillborn American Museum of Electricity in Niskayuna, but in the 1970s that plan collapsed and the locomotive was acquired by the Mohawk & Hudson Chapter NRHS. The other electric is NYC 278, the last surviving T-motor, built in 1926 and retired (I think) in 1980. As of the 1980s, these two locomotives were in very good cosmetic condition, but when the M&H chapter got evicted from the Colonie D&H shops they made the ill-fated decision to move their collection to a stretch of track through the woods on the grounds of the Glenmont power station.

Over the years this piece of track was isolated by the removal of bridges and track so the equipment was trapped. Now everything needs to be gone, and pronto, for construction of a planned factory. It remains to be seen whether the two NYC electrics end up at Danbury or in a scrap dumpster, but hopefully this story has a happy ending.

Nearly at the other end of the country, more plans are being formulated by the Phoenix Trolley Museum (aka the Arizona Street Railway Museum). Following eviction from their former home on leased land in a city park, they've purchased a plot of land nearby on Grand Avenue near Pierce. With this vital step complete, they now have a plan (rendering shown above) for the site that seems, to me at least, to be eminently sensible. Their showpiece streetcar, Phoenix Street Railway 116, won't be in operation but will acquire its own shelter and exhibit area at the back of the property. An identical car which I believe is intended to be PSR 509 will apparently be kept as a body to interpret post-railway use of streetcars. (The Fort Smith Trolley Museum and a couple of other groups also have exhibits like this.) The museum's Phelps-Dodge locomotive (shown in the rendering, amusingly, as a steam engine) will also be displayed, and there will evidently be room for events.

The museum owns - or at least did own - one additional Phoenix streetcar, PSR 504, memorable largely because for a time it served as the monkey house at a zoo. Unfortunately I'm not sure where it went after the museum was evicted from the park. Any information would be appreciated.

Lackawanna MU cars move to new owner

Thanks to River Rail Photo, from where the above picture by Marc Glucksman comes, for posting the news that the two Lackawanna MU cars formerly stored on a siding in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, have been purchased by SMS Rail Lines and removed to the SMS yard in Bridgeport, NJ. The cars are both motor cars built in 1930, 3557 and 4624, and they've been sitting on that siding near the Croton-Harmon Yard since September 1986. Until recently, at least, they were rare examples of Lackawanna MU cars that had retained their pantographs (and perhaps the rest of their electric equipment?) but other than that they're bog-standard MU motor cars from that railroad. It seemed they were being somewhat maintained, insofar as there aren't any broken windows or obvious roof failures evident, but their real condition is unknown. Also uncertain is the plan for them; SMS runs some historic diesels in short line and switching service, and has a steam engine they're working on restoring, but I don't think they've run passenger trains before. That said, I'm not very familiar with SMS and this is the company's first appearance on the PNAERC roster.

Lake Shore Electric car moved

Blaine Hays photo

There are four steel interurban cars from the Lake Shore Electric preserved. Car 174 is a body on trucks that was cosmetically restored by a museum in Newark, Ohio; cars 171 and 181 are car bodies stored in poor condition at Seashore and Northern Ohio, respectively; and that leaves LSE 167, the only one of the four that wasn't part of the 1918 order from Jewett. Car 167 was built by that company, too, but dates to 1915. It's been privately owned for decades, and by the 1990s had been fixed up quite nicely on the exterior. It even acquired (or kept?) truss rods and was placed on CTA 4000-series MCB trucks with some electrical equipment hung under it for appearance.

Unfortunately a quarter century sitting on a siding at a tourist railroad in Wellington, Ohio didn't do the car any favors. It has now made its way to Avon Lake, Ohio, and has been set down behind the old LSE Beach Park station. Its trucks are stored alongside it. Plans for it are uncertain, but LSE freight motor 38 was cosmetically restored (sort of) a few years ago and plinthed out in the parking lot in front of the Artstown Gallery shopping center, so perhaps car 167 will join it. Thanks to Bill Wulfert for passing along this news, which comes via a NORM newsletter.

As far as I know, the other electric car owned by the same family, an Interstate Public Service freight motor that was heavily rebuilt by American Aggregates into a diesel-electric, is still on the siding in Wellington. But corrections and updates are always appreciated.

Winnipeg Railway Museum closing

It's been reported that the Winnipeg Railway Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is closing at the end of this year. The museum is housed in the city's railway station, which is also used by VIA and is apparently now being eyed by a public transit project. So they've lost their lease and are being evicted. The article about this event includes some fairly optimistic language from museum representatives, and it sounds like this was expected sooner or later, so hopefully they have a workable plan in place to relocate. This is just another reminder than any museum that doesn't own its own land is living on the precipice of eviction.

WRM is home to two pieces of electric equipment. The more significant, pictured above in a photo from this 2018 article, is Winnipeg Electric Railway 356. Even though the Winnipeg streetcar system remained in operation until 1955 - and was using big wooden deck-roof cars right up until the end - not a single car from the system was preserved intact. A number of cars were sold as bodies, and a handful are still around in various stages of disrepair, but this is the only streetcar from Winnipeg that can be considered preserved. As of 2018 it was undergoing restoration work.

The other is Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting 95, one of two heavily-rebuilt electric locomotives from that Flin Flon operation to be preserved. This one is an oddity: a four-wheel 250-volt switcher built by GE in 1928. I have very little information on its history or electrical/mechanical equipment.

M&O Subway cars for sale

Many thanks to Andy Nold for sending along this link to an auction of three ex-M&O/Tandy Subway electric cars. Of the three cars in question, I believe that only two are currently on the list: Tandy 1 (not to be confused with the other Tandy 1) and Tandy 4. Both of these are squared-off "Winnebago-style" Tandy subway cars whose bodies are basically of late-1970s vintage, but whose electrical and mechanical equipment - and probably portions of the frame - started out as PCC cars. Tandy 1 was built off of Boston PCC 3166, a 1945 Pullman-Standard product, while Tandy 4 was built from DC Transit 1506, a St. Louis product of similar vintage. As for the third car, which is largely gutted, I'm not even sure what its identity is. I believe that all three have been owned by North Texas Historic Transportation, but word on the street is that NTHT is either contracting or folding altogether and it appears these three cars are being auctioned off by the local transit agency. So if you want air-electric PCC car parts, here's your ticket. The cars are located in a lot here.

And if anybody has more information on the existing Tandy cars, I'd appreciate it. My roster of ex-Tandy cars (I've used Tandy interchangeably with M&O on the list although the latter preceded the former as operators of the subway line so they're really not synonymous) is a bit of a mess. Of the seven cars on that particular list, only three are what I'd consider definitely accounted for: the "other" car 1, now restored and on display; car 2, a "Winnebago" style car, owned by McKinney Avenue and currently in storage; and DC Transit 1540, an unrebuilt PCC which returned home to Maryland. The other four include two of the cars now up for auction and two other cars that were bought by Brookville. But I'm not even sure they still exist - Brookville may have scrapped them at some point - and there's evidently a third (gutted) car in that lot in Fort Worth that's not on my list. Help is needed!

MYSTERY SOLVED: The mystery of the surviving Tandy cars ended up being solved - the two Brookville cars were confirmed scrapped, and the cars up for auction described in this post failed to find buyers and were similarly cut up.

Hudson Valley Railway car added to list

The photo above is from the Champlain Valley Transportation Museum in Plattsburgh, New York, and, sure enough, it shows an electric car masquerading as a diner. For a while I've had this car on my "possible" list, in the category of cars that I know exist but that I don't have solid information on. But this past week I was able to pick up a book by David Nestle on the Hudson Valley Railway (shameless plug - from here) and that has allowed me to fill in just enough gaps that I'm comfortable adding the car to the PNAERC list.

So this Hudson Valley Railway car is now on the roster. Unfortunately it's got several qualities that make it something of a marginal addition. First, I don't know its fleet number; second, it's not only an incomplete body but it's also missing its ends; and third, it's preserved as a diner rather than as an electric car. But none of these is a deal-killer by itself. There are other cars on the list whose numbers are unknown. For the most part, as long as I know what series or order a car is from, I'll include it. As for how incomplete the car is, there are also other examples of cars similarly "reduced" in form. But the fact that they're preserved in a museum makes a big difference. And finally, it's not the only electric preserved as a non-electric - the diner in Tupelo and the house in Fort Smith are a couple of similar examples. Again, the key here is that the car is preserved in a museum, as I wouldn't normally include a house or a diner "in the wild."

This is, to be sure, an historically significant car, modified as it is. It's the only survivor, I believe, of the various streetcar and interurban lines that once ran through the upper Hudson Valley. Nothing from the Albany or Schenectady city systems has survived, nor has anything from the Albany-Hudson interurban line. This is also a very early example of an interurban car, dating to 1901, and is one of just eight preserved cars (and the only interurban) built by local Troy, New York car builder J.M. Jones & Sons. The car's number can be narrowed down to six candidates; part of the 21-29 series on HVR, it's known not to be 21, 24, or 26 (rebuilt, rebuilt, and burned, respectively). Perhaps someday its fleet number will come to light.

New Hope & Ivyland updates

While I was looking for something else, I stumbled upon a couple of photos that shed light on recent changes involving the New Hope & Ivyland steam tourist line in Pennsylvania. The first is that Reading MU car 870 - which heretofore has been known as SEPTA 9125, its post-rebuild "Blueliner" era number - is now in service after having been rebuilt by the NH&I. It appears they're using it as a cab car for backing up their trains, which it's obviously pretty well suited for. This car was on the wire train based out of Wayne Junction for many years, so I suspect it was stripped of a lot of its interior before it ever came to the NH&I. The Tim Darnell photo above, taken several decades ago in January 2020, is from here. Its status has been updated to "towed inoperable" which is what I use for cars like this that are in use, but not really operational per se, at least not as electrics.

And then there's a second Reading MU car, SEPTA 9123, shown in photos here and here at the NH&I. The photos, taken this past May and June, describe the car as "newly arrived" which makes sense since last I knew, it was in Hamburg, PA as part of the Reading Tech collection. Its ownership has been updated from the Reading group (which, according to my list, still has nine of these cars) to the NH&I.

Highliners scrapped

Thanks to Les Beckman for notifying me that the two Metra (ex-Illinois Central) "Highliner" MU cars at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, 1502 and 1529, have been scrapped. These were two of the four "Highliners" acquired by HVRM in 2008 but they never really fit in at the museum and I believe they turned out to be less well-suited to display use than anticipated. The other pair, 1521 and 1617, were scrapped back in 2010. The remaining pair were offered to other museums earlier this year but found no takers. This is not a big historic loss; there are four "Highliners" preserved at IRM, six at the Boone & Scenic Valley, and 10 of the cars at the Museum of the American Railroad in Texas. As for HVRM, their traction collection is now down to a single Lackawanna MU car and a pair of privately-owned South Shore cars stored on their property.

NYCTA cars added to list

It was pointed out to me that a pair of NYCTA type R32 subway cars, cars 3350 and 3351, have been missing from the PNAERC list even though they're part of the New York Transit Museum collection and stored with the NYCTA historic fleet at Coney Island Yard. Many thanks to Bill Wall for correcting my earlier erroneous information that these cars were owned by Railway Preservation Corporation!

As you may have guessed from the links, these cars have now been added to the list. They were built by Budd in 1964 and make up a married-pair set. They're known as "phase II" R32's following a major rebuild in the late 1980s. A bunch of R32's remained in service until about a year ago (later than expected due to issues with newly-delivered replacement cars) which is an awfully impressive service life. I'm not sure when 3350 and 3351 were assigned to the NYTM but Bill commented that it was some time after 2008, the year the other preserved set of R32's - identical pair 3352 and 3353 - were transferred to the museum collection.

And in unrelated news, I've been able to update a bit of information about a car at the Illinois Railway Museum. The only unidentified (as in, unknown fleet number) car in the IRM collection was a 1913 streetcar body from Tri City Railway & Light in Rock Island, IL. That's no longer the case and the car has been IDed as TCR&L 483, part of the 451-485 series constructed by American. It is the only known streetcar from Rock Island to survive. Its PNAERC record has been updated to add its fleet number. (The photo above, taken by yours truly in 2001 when this car was unloaded at IRM, is the only picture I've ever seen of it at IRM before it was hurriedly tarped.)

SLPS PCC returns home

Thanks to Randy Hicks for sending along this photo, taken a couple of days ago at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, MO. The photo doesn't reveal much by itself, other than that it's a PCC car under shrink wrap, but fortunately the museum volunteers he ran into filled him in. This is San Francisco Municipal Railway 1101, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1700, and it arrived in Kirkwood just in the last couple of weeks. The car was retired in the early 1980s along with the rest of the Muni PCC fleet and was stored in San Francisco until sold to the Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway in 1995. It's been for sale for something like 15 years and its owner finally found a buyer. (Another PCC recent left the Tahoe collection, leaving only three cars still owned by TVL: two Toronto 4400's and a bizarre Frankenstein-esque double-end PCC built by welding together the front halves of two normal San Francisco PCC's.)

NMOT's plans for their new PCC aren't certain. They just haven't decided exactly what they'll do. This is the second ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC they've acquired recently (following car 1140) and the third ex-SLPS, ex-Muni PCC on the property when you add in restored car 1743. It's unlikely that they'll retain all three cars long-term, but possible that they may retain two (1743 and one other, naturally) for historic purposes, in which case they'll have to decide whether to keep 1101 or 1140.

Illinois Terminal 535 removed from list

A few different Facebook pages have, over the past couple of days, featured some pretty jaw-dropping photos of Illinois Terminal 535 in Harristown, Illinois. This interurban car body was offered for sale by the property owner last year but found little interest from the preservation community given its atrocious condition. So one well-meaning preservationist stepped up and made an attempt to move the car to a location at the Bloomington, Illinois airport. Unable to raise enough money to properly transport the car intact, the owner evidently planned to cut it in half, move it in two sections, and then piece it back together. However the car's condition (and its weight, which for some reason exceeded the capacity of the forklifts rented for the job) made this impossible too.

After the car had been cut in half, the decision was made to instead disassemble it on-site with the goal of eventual reassembly/restoration. However at this point, I'm removing it from the PNAERC list. While the car's owner is obviously dedicated and well-meaning, it strikes me as unlikely that the car can be realistically reassembled in its original form. At best it would be something akin to a replica, though given the paucity of resources available for the project even that seems like a tall order. The owner has also professed an interest in making the car part of a diner, which may itself disqualify the thing from inclusion on the PNAERC list even if it is reconstructed.

A history of car 535 can be found at the link above. Depending on how you look at it, IT 535 was arguably one of three preserved interurban sleeping cars. The other two are complete and still in their sleeping car condition: IT 504 at IRM and Interstate Public Service 167 in Squamish, BC.

Singer 1 to Hoosier Heartland

Singer 1, the 1898-vintage 250-volt GE switching locomotive formerly at the Indiana Transportation Museum, has been donated by its owner to the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company. The photo above, from the HHTC website page on the locomotive, shows it being moved into that organization's barn.

Singer 1 is an unusual little industrial critter. It was used at the Singer sewing machine factory in South Bend, Indiana until retirement in 1955, after which it was bought by Bob Selle. For a time it was stored at the Illinois Railway Museum's original site in North Chicago, then later it was stored for a time in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois. In 1971 it made its way to Noblesville, where it was displayed in good condition at the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication (later ITM) for many years. When ITM was evicted in 2018 the locomotive - still privately owned, never having been sold or transferred to ITM - was moved to Francesville, Indiana, where it has been stored since. It's the first complete piece of traction equipment owned by HHTC and also the group's first piece of freight equipment, joining a trio of interurban cars and a streetcar.

Postcard from Warehouse Point

Someone who wishes to remain anonymous has submitted some photos taken a week ago at the Connecticut Trolley Museum during that organization's "Everything That Moves" event. Many thanks for these submissions, as they have made possible some notable updates to the PNAERC list.

First, here's Bristol Traction 34, an unusual single-truck semi-convertible built by Wason in 1917. It's a body that has long sat alongside the CTM shop and at this point it seems that it has started to collapse. I'm leaving it on the PNAERC list for now, but with a note about its condition.

Here's a sad one: Chicago Elevated Railway 4284, a standard Chicago "4000" built in 1922 and acquired by CTM in 1975. In the late 1970s this car was repainted in as-built colors and some backdating work (notably the door sash) was done, but I believe its interior was left taken apart so it was never put into service. A 1979 photo can be found here. It's been deteriorating for years. This car is still part of the CTM collection and was not part of the recent deaccession and sale.

Corbin E2 is a four-wheel battery locomotive built in 1907 by Baldwin-Westinghouse. I have no idea whether it ever ran at CTM, but if it did, then it was quite a few years ago.

In the top photo, Corbin E2 is on the left and in the center is Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority 3003, the oldest extant Boston PCC car and one of five PCC's from that city at CTM. This car was built by Pullman-Standard in 1941 and acquired by CTM back in 1977. Part of its interior was restored by volunteers (you can see some fairly nice-looking ceiling panels in that second shot) but then the car was put outside and it went downhill rapidly.

MBTA 3333 is Dallas double-ended PCC, built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 as Dallas Railway & Terminal 625. It was sold to Boston in 1959 and went to CTM in 1978. Amazingly, this car actually ran as recently as about 2006, and I believe it's the most recent Dallas double-ended PCC anywhere to move under its own power.

I'll confess I'm not certain which is which, but these two are MBTA 3306 and 3309, both "picture window" PCC cars built for Boston by Pullman-Standard in 1951. I think this was the only series of PCC streetcar to be built for U.S. service with MCM control. These cars have both been at CTM since 1992 and I do not know whether either has ever run at the museum.

This is Montreal Tramways W1, a generally typical derrick work car. It was built by Industrial Brownhoist in 1910 and served until the end, going to CTM in 1959. Its cab has long sat outside the museum's shop building.

And now we get to the cars that were deaccessed in 2018. This is Chicago Transit Authority 4175, one of four surviving (perhaps "surviving" should be in quotation marks) center-entrance "Baldy" type 4000s. The car was built by Cincinnati in 1915, put into work service as work motor S360 in 1965, and retired in 1979. At that point it was briefly shipped out to the Illinois Railway Museum, where its motors were removed because CTM wanted a Baldy trailer and not a Baldy motor (the earlies "Baldies" were trailers but this one was built, and always ran as, a motor car). It then went out to Connecticut. I'm honestly not sure whether to leave it on the PNAERC list. I don't know why its steel roof is torn open like that, and it appears that part of the car side has been pushed in. This doesn't look like the car just started collapsing; it looks more like CTM has started scrapping it. Either way, it doesn't look very salvageable.

North Shore 162 is one of the two interurban cars from that line that were deaccessed by CTM in 2018 and is by far the better of the two in terms of condition. That said, its condition is deteriorating rapidly and it already looks a lot like car 710 did a decade or so ago. I'm not sure what the museum's plans are for this car right now, nor whether it has been purchased - either as a complete car or for parts - by any other group.

And here's the other North Shore car. This is car 710, built by Cincinnati in 1924. Like car 162, it went to the ill-fated American Museum of Electricity project in Niskayuna, NY after the North Shore quit in 1963 and then ended up going to CTM in 1971. Neither North Shore car ever ran in Connecticut and car 710's condition had gotten particularly bad in recent years. It now appears that CTM is in the process of scrapping the car; it's obviously been tipped off its trucks and it looks like underbody equipment is being salvaged for reuse, which is good. I have removed this car from the PNAERC roster. It is the fourth North Shore car, and first 700-series car, scrapped during the preservation era.

I cannot say with absolute certainty but I'm pretty sure that this pile of scrap metal is all that remains of Chicago Transit Authority 4409, the other 4000-series car (beside 4175 pictured above) that was deaccessed in 2018. Car 4409 was a standard, generally unremarkable 4000-series car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and acquired by CTM in 1979. Car 4409 has been removed from the PNAERC list. (That said, if I'm wrong about the identity of the subject of this photo, please let me know! I've been wrong about this kind of thing before.)

It's tough to see electric cars getting scrapped like this, but as I wrote when the museum announced the deaccession of these pieces, it makes sense to get rid of them. None of the deaccessed cars is unique in preservation and all are likely beyond CTM's means to restore at this point. Other, more historic cars at the museum, like AE&C 303, are suffering grievously for want of money and resources, and CTM is doing the right thing to pare down its collection so that it can focus a bit more on maintaining the other cars in its fleet. It appears that parts are being stripped off of these cars to facilitate the restoration of cars at other museums, and at this point that's probably the highest and best use for these pieces.

EDIT: I've also changed the status of two other cars at CTM. York Utilities 72, a Birney built in 1919 for Laconia Street Railway, and Manchester Street Railway 94, a single-truck Wason dating to 1905, are both streetcars bodies that are currently listed on CTM's website roster. However I never saw them when I visited the museum a few times 10-15 years ago and I believe the reason is that their locations had been swallowed by the forest and made them largely inaccessible except during the winter. Regardless, I've changed these two from "stored inoperable" to "situation unknown" because I have doubts they are still intact. Any clarification on their status is appreciated.

Muni PCC cars removed from list

It took me long enough but finally I noticed the, er, notice at the bottom of Market Street Railway's roster page concerning the cars that Muni offered up for sale back in 2018 as described here. Sure enough, sometime in 2019 SFMR did end up scrapping ten of the cars listed on their disposal notice (there was one car, car 1140, that escaped and was donated to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis instead, while identical car 1139 was either given a reprieve or erroneously missed on the website scrapping list). The ten cars have now been removed from the PNAERC roster, knocking the size of the Muni collection on my list from 70 cars down to 60.

The scrapped cars come from four different groups. Three are Muni "Baby Ten" cars numbered 1023, 1031, and 1038. These cars were built by St. Louis in 1951 as part of the last domestic order for PCC cars, were retired by Muni in the early 1980s, and have been in dead storage since then. There are numerous other examples of the type preserved, both on Muni rails and elsewhere. (Rather than keep repeating a version of that line, I'll just say now that none of the scrapped cars is anything like unique in preservation.)

The second group includes three 1100-series Muni PCC cars, 1106, 1108, and 1125. These three were all built by St. Louis in 1946 for St. Louis Public Service (as SLPS 1733, 1737, and 1715, respectively) and were acquired by Muni from SLPS in 1957. Car 1125 was retired by Muni in the early 1980s and stored until scrapped, while the other two passed through private ownership (1106) and something called the Western Railroaders Hall of Fame (1108) before being bought back by Muni in 2003 as potential rebuilding candidates. The photo above shows car 1108 back in 2008.

The third group includes two Pittsburgh 4000s (not to be confused with CTA 4000s), PCC cars that were very heavily rebuilt by Port Authority Transit in the late 1980s to extend their service lives. These two, PAT 4008 and 4009, used 1949-vintage PCC cars 1709 and 1700 as cores for their 1989 in-house rebuilding efforts, but as a practical matter there was more 1989 than 1949 content in them despite their PCC-esque outward appearance. They were bought by Muni in 2001 for potential rebuilding but their unique rebuilt features and sealed windows made them iffy candidates.

The final two cars scrapped were ex-SEPTA PCC cars from Philadelphia built by St. Louis in 1948. One, SEPTA 2133, was acquired by Muni back in 1990 and partly disassembled as San Francisco was considering buying Philadelphia cars for its F-Market Line heritage project. At one point this car was supposed to be car 1064, the 15th ex-Philadelphia car rebuilt for the new line, but its condition was thought to be too deteriorated at that point and it was just stored. Then there is Muni 1054, ex-SEPTA 2121, bought by SFMR in 1994 for F-Market Line service. It was rebuilt and repainted in attractive Philadelphia Rapid Transit silver-and-cream colors (a livery today worn by nearly identical car 1060). It ran in regular service in San Francisco for about 8 years but in November 2003 it was rear-ended by a speeding LRV. Fortunately nobody was killed but the PCC car was so badly damaged that it was judged irreparable.

Photo above: Peter Ehrlich, from NYCSubway.org

Drill motor goes to Kingston

New York City Transit Authority 41, a "drill motor" (known everywhere else as a cab-on-flat locomotive) built by Magor in 1930, has been acquired by the Trolley Museum of New York and has been moved to the TMNY site in Kingston. The photo above is from a Facebook post from the museum (no log-in required).

The history of this unique piece of equipment in recent decades is slightly muddy. It was built for the IND in 1930 and was apparently used in service into the 1970s. Around 1978, I believe, it was acquired by the Trolley Museum of New York but was never moved to the TMNY site in Kingston (I'm not sure TMNY was even in Kingston that early). It remained at Coney Island under the oversight of New York Transit Museum and later, possibly starting around 2008, under the oversight of the Railway Preservation Corporation, which owns several of the cars in the NYCTA historic fleet. The TMNY Facebook post describes this as "an extended loan to the New York Transit Museum... under the care of the Railway Preservation Corporation." But it is now at home in Kingston in the company of a handful of other New York subway cars. Though not operational, the car is (I believe) complete and it appears to be pretty solid. Many thanks to Mark Wolodarsky for sending along this update.

San Diego car bodies acquired by SDERA

The San Diego Electric Railway Association has announced on Facebook (no login required) that they have acquired the three preserved Class 1 streetcars built for San Diego in 1912. Their newsletter from the end of last year confirms that these cars, all of which were owned by the late Chris Chaffee and preserved under the auspices of his "Historic San Diego Class 1 Streetcars" organization, were donated to SDERA by Mr Chaffee's widow.

All three cars were built by St. Louis Car Company in 1912 and were retired at the end of the 1930s. Car 138, shown in the photo above from the SDERA Facebook post, is in the best condition and its body was cosmetically restored by Mr Chaffee. The car had made occasional appearances in parades in this restored condition. The other two are car 126 and car 128, both also pictured in the Facebook post. These two are in worse condition but from the photo they still appear to be reasonably solid, no doubt aided considerably by the arid climate.

All three cars served as houses from c1939 until acquired by Mr Chaffee in 1996. Car 138 is now on display at the SDERA site at National City while the other two are stored towards the back of the property. These three cars were the only cars on the PNAERC list to have been owned by "HSDC1S" so that organization is now a former, not current, owner, and SDERA's collection (not counting a couple of foreign cars) is up to eight cars. Considering that 20 years ago SDERA owned none of these cars and that six of the eight are of local significance, that's pretty impressive.

Missing streetcar in the Upper Peninsula

I keep a list of "mystery cars," most of which appear to have been preserved at some point but then dropped off the radar. One of these is the car pictured here: Marquette County Gas Light & Traction 15.

I'm not sure who built it for MCGL&T, a small streetcar line that ran between Ishpeming and Negaunee in Michigan's Upper Peninsula between 1893 and 1927. It may have been purchased secondhand. But it was in existence as recently as 2014 according to this newsletter (PDF) posted online by the Negaunee Historical Society. At that time, the car was said to have been moved from a previous storage location outside the Negaunee Senior Center to a "temporary storage" site. A 2010 forum post here provides additional information, including the car's fleet number: 15. The post also indicates that 2010 was when the car was moved from the Senior Center and claims that it was moved to the Tracy Mine, an abandoned mine east of Negaunee. Google aerial images and online "urban explorer" photos show some pretty impressive extant buildings at the Tracy Mine site but no sign of the streetcar. I've tried contacting the Negaunee Historical Society but without luck.

So, anyone know what happened to MCGSL&T 15? Is it still at the Tracy Mine site, possibly even stored inside one of the buildings? Or was it demolished or otherwise lost during the last seven years?

EDIT: This car has now been added to the PNAERC list, but not as a MCGSL&T car! See here.

Warehouse Point questions

"Hey," you say, "that's not an electric car." And it surely isn't. It's the LEV2, a British railbus constructed in 1980 by Leyland/Wickham and intended as a prototype for the American market. But railbuses were never as popular in the US as they were in Britain and this unloved example bounced around a bit before landing at the Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor, CT.

It was one of several pieces of equipment deaccessed by CTM in 2018 and offered for sale. As outlined in this blog post, the sale also included six pieces of electric equipment: both of the museum's North Shore interurban cars, a Long Island Railroad MP54 commuter coach, a Canadian National boxcab electric locomotive, and two Chicago 4000-series 'L' cars.

The reason this post features the LEV2 is that it has come to light within the past week that the British railbus is no more. Despite efforts to buy it from CTM and possibly repatriate it to the UK, the museum has apparently cut it up. Rumor has it that at least one of the North Shore cars may also have been cut up, despite offers from other museum groups to acquire that car as a parts source for other restoration projects. So the question is: can anyone confirm what electric cars, if any, have been scrapped at Warehouse Point in the last couple of years? Are any of the six electrics offered up for sale in 2018 still available for sale? Any information is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: this question has more-or-less been answered.

South Brooklyn steeplecab to Branford

Many thanks to Bill Wall for forwarding the above photo and the news that Branford has acquired the locomotive pictured, New York City Transit Authority 7. NYCTA 7 is a fairly standard GE steeplecab, though fitted with a flat roof for low clearance areas. It was built in 1925 for the South Brooklyn Railway and later in life performed maintenance and switching duties for the general subway system. I believe this was the last locomotive on the New York subway system with trolley poles. Anyway, it's complete and in pretty good shape, so it will make a great addition to the Branford collection. The photo shows the locomotive being loaded today, leaving New York City ground (probably) for the last time, and it is due to arrive at Branford tomorrow. Bill mentioned that Branford extends their thanks to the New York Transit Museum for making this long-sought-after locomotive available to the museum.

While locomotive 7 may have been the last steeplecab with trolley poles on the New York subway system, it's not the last steeplecab. The NYCTA/NYTM still has locomotive 6 on their property, built a few years earlier than 7 but virtually identical. And of course there's the very historic NYCTA 5, the last early-style arch-window GE steeplecab in existence, built in 1910 and now part of the NYTM collection.

UPDATE: Bill has sent along some additional photos of locomotive 7 being loaded onto its Silk Road trailer along the iconic Brooklyn waterfront. These are the locomotive's old stomping grounds, just about where the old South Brooklyn Railway 39th Street Yard and its interchange with the Bush Terminal Railroad were located. All photos are copyright Bill Wall - do not copy without permission.

Helena streetcar trailer added to list

Many thanks to John Csoka, who has sent me information on the streetcar trailer shown above in Helana, Montana. I've known about this car's existence for a while, and guessed that it was probably an original car (albeit heavily restored/reconstructed) and not a replica, but it wasn't on the PNAER list because I never had any information on its history. Until now!

John relates information from the book "Montana Trolleys" that the car in question, whose number is uncertain, was built in 1890 by Brownell and is from the Helena Light & Railway 16-19 series. These four open car trailers were renumbered from 27 and 30-32 and lasted until around 1928, very near the end of streetcar service in Helena. This particular car, along with a single-truck closed car body, ended up on a farm north of Helena until a junkyard owner in Silver Star, MT bought both of them in the 1960s. He cosmetically restored this car, presumably to its current, generally sympathetic if not painstakingly accurate, appearance. Soon it found its way to a stint on display in Nevada City, probably at the then-new Alder Gulch Shortline tourist railroad. Sometime around 1974 (judging from the plaque affixed to the car) it was moved to its current location on the Last Chance Gulch pedestrian mall in Helena and it has been on display here ever since. The photo above, taken by John, shows the car's current appearance.

I'm glad to add this car to the list, even if its precise identity isn't known. There are several preserved cars on the list whose fleet numbers aren't certain, but if I know who built them, when, and for whom, I'm satisfied that there's enough information to include them. This car is pretty historic, as it's the oldest of just eight preserved Brownell cars. It's also one of just two cars from Helena - which brings me back to that junkyard owner in Silver Star. The closed car he bought is still around, too, and like this open car it appears to be owned by the City of Helena. It's HL&R 3, and last I knew - per this online article - it was undergoing restoration at Capitol High School. But there's been no update for 12 years now. Anyone know where it has ended up?

Plow leaves Seashore

It came to my attention recently that MBTA 5122, one of several Boston snow plows converted from Type 3 semiconvertibles to have been acquired by the Seashore Trolley Museum, was sold last year. The above photo from here shows the car in 2010 and it wasn't in the best shape then, so it's not too hard to see why Seashore would be willing to let it go. It's the first electric car deaccessed by Seashore since they sent their Cleveland trailer to Northern Ohio in 2010.

Car 5122 was built by St. Louis in 1908 and was later rebuilt as a snow plow. It was one of six of these plows that made their way to Seashore, with most arriving in the 1990s and 2000s. This one showed up in Kennebunkport in 1995 and I'm not sure whether it ever ran at Seashore, but it was out of service for years (one or two of the other Type 3 snow plows in the collection are regular work cars and locomotives at the museum).

It was sold last year to the Samuel Slater Experience, the new museum in Webster, Massachusetts that only recently showed up on the PNAERC list as described here. Many thanks to Tom Tello for confirming this for me. As near as I can tell, SSE decided at some point that they needed a streetcar for their museum but it seems they've changed course once or twice deciding how best to accomplish that. This video on Facebook (no login required) is from November 2019 and describes efforts to have a replica streetcar built by a contractor. By mid-2020, it appears they had instead decided to acquire car 5122 from Seashore. And by October 2020, they were the proud owners of a Los Angeles Railway single-trucker in need of little or no restoration work.

I tried contacting the Webster museum but nobody got back to me, so I don't know what their plans are for 5122. Perhaps it will be restored and put elsewhere in the museum, or perhaps its role has been filled by the LARy car. If anyone finds out where it is and what its owners are doing with it, please let me know. In the meantime, on the PNAERC list its ownership has been updated and its status has been changed to "unknown."

EDIT: This car has been scrapped, as described here.

How did I miss this one?

It's not too unusual for me to happen upon a random electric car body preserved by some local history group that has been in preservation for years, but unbeknownst to me (there are plenty of examples of this). But the latest example of this is a bit more prominent than most, or at least you'd think so.

Pacific Electric 4601 is one of that line's giant "Blimp" interurban cars and was built by ACF in 1911 for the Southern Pacific's electric lines in the Bay Area, later known as Interurban Electric Railway. Following the 1941 demise of IER, this car was among a batch of IER cars sent down to the LA area in 1942 for wartime service with the US Maritime Commission. In 1944 it was sold to the PE and renumbered 4601. Unfortunately it didn't keep its new identity for long: in October 1946 it was involved in a very bad head-on collision in Torrance that resulted in the death of the motorman. With one end hopelessly crushed in, the car was stripped and sold for scrap.

Little did I know until now, but it was bought by a Torrance resident who kept it around as described in this online article. In 1987 the car's body was donated to the city and placed in Wilson Park next to the site of the Southern California Live Steamers. It's still there today, sitting on Bettendorf trucks, with its wrecked end still lopped off, but painted in a coat of red paint and looking reasonably well maintained. You'd think I would have come across this earlier, but it took someone named James Whitney posting the above photo on Facebook to bring the car to my attention. It certainly qualifies for the list; there are other cars missing an end on the PNAERC roster, and with its trucks and paint job it's obviously meant to be an historic display. As prominent as its placement is, I just never came across references to it until now. Better late than never!

And while I was at it, I noticed that I had screwed up some of the ownership history on the various preserved ex-IER cars. That's now been fixed - the cars are listed as having been owned by the SP until 1934, when the East Bay electric lines were reorganized as IER, and then the cars that went south to the USMC in 1942 have had that owner added. With the corrections, PE 498 has now gone through a total of ten different owners or numbers, including three different USMC numbers and two PE numbers. I'm not sure if it's the record holder for ownership changes but it's certainly up there.

Los Angeles car turns up in Massachusetts

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this interesting link about Los Angeles Railway 57. You will recall that three years ago now, as described here, car 57 was put up for sale by the Poway-Midland in Poway, California. The history of this car is uncertain but as near as I can figure it was built in 1894 as LARy 54 and was later used as "material car" 9306. It's been questionably restored but still retains a lot of original material, including an ultra-rare McGuire single truck of some sort.

Anyway, last September it crossed the continent and wound up at the Samuel Slater Experience, a brand new "living history" museum in Webster, Massachusetts south of Worcester. There's a video of the car being put in its display spot here (Facebook link, no log-in required). From the SSE website, it looks like this car is being used to represent local streetcars and apparently visitors can go for a "ride" complete with the car rocking back and forth a bit while a movie plays outside the windows. It sounds kind of interesting. Regardless, SSE has now been added to the PNAERC list as a new owner (supplanting Poway-Midland, which no longer owns any electric cars) and car 57's record has been updated.

Kennecott Copper locomotive runs

The image above is a frame grab from a video posted yesterday on Facebook here (no log-in required) by the Western Railway Museum. The video shows the first operation in many years of Kennecott Copper 700, a huge articulated-truck steeplecab built in 1927 by GE. The WRM post says that the locomotive still needs a bit of work but it sounds like their plan is to put it into revenue service. KCC 700's status on the list has thus been updated from "displayed inoperable" to "operated occasionally."

This is a pretty unusual piece of equipment to see operating. It's the only one of the nine preserved Kennecott Copper electric locomotives that's operational; most of the others aren't even close and/or aren't located at museums with live overhead. It's the biggest operational steeplecab in an American museum by far. And it's one of only two articulated-truck steeplecabs currently operational (the other is much older and smaller). Kudos to the WRM crew on getting this unusual piece going.

Denver work car added to list

Thanks to Olin Anderson, who alerted me to this post on the Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum. It describes (with pictures, including the one above) a Denver Tramways work car that heretofore was unknown to me. So that's the good news: Denver Tramways 723, an arch-roof double-end utility car, has now been added to the PNAERC list.

But then there's the bad news. First of all, the car - privately owned and located in Strasburg, Colorado - was up for auction today, June 5th. I have no idea whether it sold or, if it did, to whom. That's an issue because if it was bought by an individual then it may be difficult to track down where it ends up, and if it didn't sell at all then it may simply get demolished and that can be hard to confirm too. Second on the bad news front is that I have virtually no information on this car. UPDATE: Many thanks to John Swindler for sending an information sheet on this car from the auction website. That has allowed me to add quite a bit of technical information on it. John also reports that the car body sold at auction for $250, but I'm still not sure to whom. Anyone know?

Where's the rest of it

This isn't directly applicable to the PNAERC list, but Bill Wall from Branford sent this along and it was too curious not to share. It's the faux end of a New York subway car, built to replicate an R-17 type car. Branford's car 6688, of this type, was recently sent out for some movie shoot work, and when it returned to East Haven it was accompanied by this thing. Bill calls this "6688 and one-eighth."

I'm not formally tracking car ends, of course, but from memory I can think of a handful that are at trolley museums. This car end (which I believe is not an actual subway car end) is joined at Branford by a Lake Shore Electric interurban car end (also, I believe, a re-creation) displayed in Sprague. Seashore has its own interurban car end (which may be an authentic one) as well as the front end of a Boston "Type 6" prototype streetcar. PTM used to have the front end of a Pittsburgh PCC attached to the wall of its barn, though I'm not sure where it is now, and IRM has a pair of Illinois Terminal interurban car ends (not on display) built by the IT as spares to use as wreck replacements. Jackson Street Roundhouse in Saint Paul, MN also used to have a Twin City car end as a display piece but I think it's gone now. What am I missing?

The "Philly Six" are gone

Back in February, I wrote this post about the sorry remains of six privately-owned SEPTA PCC's stored off of Erie Avenue that were being harvested for large body sections and other parts. At that time, I judged five of the six cars to be so badly mauled that they weren't worth keeping on the PNAERC list. As of today, the sixth car has been removed as well.

Thanks to Bill Wall for forwarding along these photos, from Matt Nawn, showing the current state of affairs off of Erie Avenue. It appears that all of the cars have finally been scrapped, including car 2717, which was the only one that was generally intact and had been left on the list until now (it may be the car in the upper photo, but who knows?). I won't rehash my February post, which briefly outlines these cars' significance (or almost total lack thereof) and history, I'll only say that this is a very expected development.

The Second Fort Collins Birney

As I've mentioned before, I don't always see news when it happens, even shortly after it happens, even if it's published online. Such is the case with the "news" from about a year ago that Fort Collins now has their second Birney, Fort Collins Municipal Railway 25, restored and running. The above photo (from a Facebook post dating to last September - no log-in required) shows both of the organization's cars in front of their barn. Longtime stalwart car 21, which has been running for some 35 years now, is on the right in its as-delivered livery. On the left, in later (though not quite end-of-service) silver and green, is newly-restored car 25.

Car 25 had quite the odyssey getting to this point. It was built in 1922 for Richmond, Virginia, and ran for Virginia Electric Power until it was sold to Fort Collins in 1945. It ran there for six years. For four decades, from retirement in 1951 until 1991, it was privately owned and apparently sat next to the depot in Victor, Colorado. The SCANA Corp, a power company in South Carolina, bought the car and had it restored by a company in Washington state. It was painted in South Carolina Public Service colors but it doesn't seem that SCANA had much of a use for it and in 1999 it was conveyed to the Charlotte Trolley group. They couldn't really use it either, and in 2008 sold it to the group in Fort Collins. It has undergone a years-long restoration effort and will now be back in service on home rails. Its status has been updated from "undergoing restoration" to "operated often."

Highliners for sale

The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in Indiana announced on Facebook (no log-in required) that it is deaccessing its two Metra, ex-Illinois Central, "Highliner" MU cars. Cars 1502 and 1529, both from the first order for Highliners built by St. Louis in 1971, were retired around 2007 and were acquired by HVRM in 2008. The museum actually bought four of the double-deck cars but the other two, 1521 and 1617, were scrapped not long afterwards in 2010.

This group Highliners to be retired back in 2007 included cars Metra wanted to retire first, and HVRM has suggested that it's unlikely 1502 and 1529 will leave on their own wheels (though they arrived that way), so the two cars up for sale are likely not in great condition. Presumably they will end up being scrapped. I'm not exactly sure why HVRM acquired them in the first place but Highliners were snapped up by a few different organizations including the Mendota Railroad Museum, Boone & Scenic Valley, and the Museum of the American Railroad, apparently because they were cheap and plentiful. The only museums that have Highliners and are capable of running them are Boone and IRM and only the latter has actually operated its cars.