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.

The last ITM electrics

It appears that the last electric cars owned by the Indiana Transportation Museum, formerly IMOTAC, have been scrapped. Lackawanna MU cars 4336, 4337, and 4361, all of which were relocated from a siding in Cicero, Indiana to an empty lot in Logansport in November 2019, have been cut up per a post on RyPN (thanks to Wesley Paulson for tracking this down). The above photo, from several days ago, shows the early stages of the scrapping process, with what appears to be a backhoe demolishing an Army troop sleeper or something.

Of course these three cars are no real loss, and given their atrocious condition it's no surprise that they're gone. It's more of a surprise that they were moved to Logansport at all and not scrapped in place in Cicero. But the recent history of ITM is a story of poor decisions and misplaced resources. To my knowledge, there are still railroad cars here and there owned by ITM, so the organization still casts a shadow, thin though it might be. But there's nothing owned by the group that remains on the PNAERC list.

Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200 update

Many thanks to Thomas Mafrici, who has forwarded along photos of recent restoration work on his interurban car. You'll recall that back in 2014, as noted here, he purchased the body of Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200. Car 200 is a heavy wooden interurban car built in 1906 by Cincinnati and is, I believe, the last wooden car surviving from any of the Syracuse area interurban lines. Thomas and cabinetmaker Dan Zollo have since been working on rebuilding the car and have sent along update photos. Most recent work has concentrated on rebuilding the car's roof. The scope of the project and the evident craftsmanship are both impressive. On the PNAERC roster, car 200's condition has been updated from "stored inoperable" to "undergoing restoration."

Jersey Shore car identified

 

The Jersey Shore Historical Society in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania (no, not New Jersey) has posted some information on its Facebook page (no log-in required) about Jersey Shore Street Railway 14. This is the single-truck streetcar body that has been at the Peter Herdic Transportation Museum and was only added to the PNAERC list about three months ago (see here).

The post from JSHS is quite interesting. The gist is that they are acquiring the car from the Peter Herdic museum and plan on restoring it over the next few years. So that's good news, and once the car is physically moved I'll change over its ownership on the PNAERC list. But they also include some interesting information on the car's history. Most notably, I now know its number: JSR 14. Per a previous email from Matt Nawn, I knew that the car was part of the JSSR 14-16 series but didn't know which car it was. Matt reported that JSSR 14 would have earlier been Philadelphia Rapid Transit 86 (sold to JSSR at an unknown date along with PRT 939 and 942) and would have then been numbered JSSR 101 until it was rebuilt - again at an unknown date - as a one-man car and renumbered 14. So there are still plenty of unknowns about the car's history, and the automatically-generated list of its past owners on the PNAERC roster is out of order because there are so many missing dates, but this helps fill in some pretty big gaps.

Finally, the JSHS post has some nice photos of the car before it was tarped, including the one at the top of this post. For a body, it looks like it's in decent condition, or at least it was when the photos were taken.