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.
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