List Clean-up

For the end of the year, I'm doing a bit of list clean-up. There are quite a few cars on the list whose status is uncertain, but there are three that I've decided to remove from the list because their current existence seems especially doubtful.

All three are PCCs. The first is Muni 1111, a PCC built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1707. It was sold in 1994 to Gunnar Henrioulle, aka Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway, and was stored in Lake Tahoe until around 2007. Supposedly, that year it was sold to the City of Savannah, GA, and moved to Warren Railcar Services in Warren, PA, for conversion into a battery-powered heritage trolley. But there, the train goes cold - I've never seen a photo of it in Warren (or in Savannah, for that matter), and I haven't heard anything at all about the car in 15 years. Warren Railcar Services is long out of business and the Savannah heritage trolley was inaugurated (using a Melbourne car), ran for a while, and then ended. My best guess is that car 1111 was scrapped at some point. It's shown above, in a photo I believe was taken around 2006-2007, in Lake Tahoe; the two cars to the right were among the dozen or so that were sold to a developer in St. Charles, MO, with all of the PCCs being scrapped in 2011 after the developer went bust in the 2008 recession.

The other two PCC cars being taken off the PNAERC list are Tandy Subway rebuilds ("Winnebagos") of DC Transit 1945 air-electric PCC cars. Tandy cars 3 and 6 were supposedly acquired by Brookville Equipment Corporation in Pennsylvania, either as rebuild candidates or possibly as parts sources, and I believe they were indeed moved to Brookville. But I haven't seen any recent photos of them and they don't appear in current aerial views of the Brookville site. My guess is that they've been scrapped. UPDATE: Thanks to Wesley Paulson for confirming that these cars have, indeed, been scrapped by Brookville.

All three cars (EDIT: car 1111 only) qualify as "mystery cars" since I don't have any real confirmation that they were scrapped, so if you can contribute any information, it's much appreciated. Thank you!

WRM acquiring a trio of California electric cars

Many thanks to David Johnston for sending along the news that the Western Railway Museum is acquiring three electric cars local to its area. The cars have been under the purview of an organization called Friends of Light Rail and are stored indoors on the property of the Sacramento Regional Transit light rail system. However FoLR, which sounds like it was kind of an ephemeral organization to begin with, has essentially melted away, so the cars were made available to WRM.

The first car being acquired is Pacific Gas & Electric 18, shown above. As far as I know, the history of this car is a bit of a mystery insofar as its builder and vintage are unknown. It began life as a California car and was later enclosed, as were many Sacramento cars. I believe it's similar to PG&E 14, currently preserved at WRM. These two cars, 14 and 18, have the unusual distinction of being the only "rope brake" cars on the PNAERC roster.

Next up is Sacramento Northern 27, shown here, a suburban California car built in 1908 by St. Louis for the Northern Electric. It was used in "Elverta Scoot" service between Chico and Elverta (more info here). It's the oldest SN electric car preserved and is a unique piece of equipment among the extant SN fleet.

Finally, we have Pacific Gas & Electric 65, a lightweight "Christmas present car" built in 1929 by American for Sacramento. This car is identical to PG&E 63, already preserved at WRM, and the museum tentatively plans to ultimately restore whichever of the two cars is assessed to be in better condition.

There's one additional car stored as part of the FoLR collection: Pacific Gas & Electric 36, shown here, is a large California car built by American in 1913. However it's not going to be preserved for two reasons: first of all, it's in extremely poor condition and its body is collapsing; second, identical sister car 35 is preserved in fully (and beautifully) restored condition in Sacramento as a representative of the type.

Speaking of Pacific Gas & Electric 35, David also sent along photos of that car, shown below. Car 35 was restored in the 1980s by Fred Bennett for the San Jose light rail system, and given their location, the car was given a faux paint job to represent "San Jose Railroad 129" - a car that never existed. However in 1999 the car was sent back home to Sacramento, where it has been stored in good condition - though largely unused - in its San Jose garb. (I have seen early-2000s photos of it lettered PG&E 35, but those may have been stickers or magnets used for a one-time event.)

Atlanta Subway Car Preserved

In a slightly surprising piece of news, the Southeastern Railway Museum outside of Atlanta - which has a small collection of electric cars but is mostly focused on steam road equipment - has acquired a car from the initial order for Atlanta subway cars. MARTA 509 arrived at the museum on Wednesday and will be placed on public display there, according to this press release.

This is actually a relatively significant acquisition, historically speaking. First, of course, it has local importance. Car 509 is the first and only MARTA car in preservation, and given the paucity of trolley museums in the southeast and the difficulty in putting large subway cars like this to practical use in a museum setting, may very well be the only MARTA car in preservation for quite a long time. Amazingly, I think it's also only the second electric railway car from Atlanta ever to be preserved intact after retirement (you may have to think hard to guess the first), at least if you only count cars still around today.

Furthermore, this car has some national significance too. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, several cities built all-new heavy-rail subway systems, including not just Atlanta but also San Francisco, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. Other than a pair of WMATA cars that have supposedly been squirreled away for safekeeping, but to my knowledge have not yet appeared publicly as historic artifacts, this MARTA car is the first car from any of these modern subway systems to be preserved in the US. (I say "in the US" because this preserved car from the Montreal Metro is also from a modern subway system, albeit a very unusual system built for rubber-tire cars.)

EDIT: Thanks to Richard Schauer for sending a link to this video about the history of car 509 and its donation to SERM. I was quite impressed; the video has a good mixture of technical/design history of the car and general background information on MARTA.

Another Seashore deaccession

The Seashore Trolley Museum is underway with its "fourth round of re-homing" and in addition to the South Shore car and Long Island Rail Road car mentioned here back in July, there's a third car that's available: MBTA 3283, a line car built in 1949. Car 3283 is pretty unremarkable; it's the only car on the list built by Henry Dow, but Dow wasn't a car builder, it was a local company that (if I recall correctly) mostly built houses. The most interesting thing about the car is probably the story, on Seashore's deaccession listing, about its involvement in a major head-on collision with another work car in 1969 that killed a man and injured 16 more, in part the result of the crews of both cars having been drinking. Ah, the good? old days...

Regardless, the car arrived at Seashore in 2007 and ran briefly before it was sidelined with electrical issues. If you're interested in 3283, there's a catch: Seashore is keeping the trucks, motors, and electrical equipment. Only the body is available. With the market for line car bodies pretty slim, this car will mostly likely end up scrapped, but only time will tell for sure.

Northeastern Updates

There are a few updates to the PNAERC data out of museums (and non-museums) in the northeast. First, NYCTA 9075, an R-33ML subway car from New York, was moved over the weekend from its home of 17 years on a plinth in front of Queens Borough Hall. Many thanks to Bill Wall for the striking photo above. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the car has gone, though online rumors suggest somewhere in New Jersey (which doesn't narrow it down much!). At the time the car was sold, it was said to have been purchased by an art dealer, so make of that what you will. Any updates are appreciated!

Second, there's another update to the ongoing saga of the deaccessed Warehouse Point cars. Halton County Radial Railway has come to an agreement to acquire Canadian National 6714, a boxcab locomotive from the Montreal suburban electrification. The locomotive was built in Toronto (it was news to me that this series of six locomotives were built in three different locations!) so has some local significance in addition to its technological significance. That means that, of the six cars deaccessed by CTM, three have been scrapped and two sold with just one still available: LIRR 4153. Any takers?

And finally, Branford's restoration shop has posted on its Facebook page that the wheel sets and motors have been pulled from underneath their diminutive four-wheel GE locomotive "Amy." Surely one of the more obscure pieces of equipment at the museum, this 1902 industrial boxcab gains a bit of prominence on the PNAERC list because the top line in the alphabetical "Now or Formerly Owned By" search box on the homepage is always Abendroth Foundry, the locomotive's owner. It's been out of service for years but that looks like it will be changing in the near future. The locomotive's condition has been changed to "undergoing restoration."

Boston PCC Overhaul Progress

Since we've had a "PCC overhaul program progress report" from Philadelphia, why not one from Boston, too?

Indeed, the T is also going through their PCC fleet and rebuilding it a handful of cars at a time, though there are some differences. First, these cars weren't modernized to quite the extend the Philadelphia cars were - they still retain their original running gear, including air-electric brakes. They did receive air-conditioning and sealed windows, though. Anyway, the overhaul program started with cars 3265 and 3234 in 2019. It was suspended for a time, but 3265 returned to service in April of this year, and car 3234 has now joined it back home in Mattapan.

The next two cars to get rebuilt are, apparently, 3238 and 3260. The former is just one of the members of the Mattapan fleet (it's on the left in the photo above, by Cam Moore via Facebook), but the latter car is a bit of a special case. Car 3260 was involved in a fairly serious collision back in December 2017, when it was rear-ended by 3262. Both cars have been out of service since. And while it's good that 3260 is being rebuilt, it appears that car 3262 - which had its front end badly stove in - has now had its rear end cut off aft of the bolster. This section will be grafted onto car 3260. I'm not certain whether the T has already cut up the rest of 3262, or whether the incomplete shell will hang around as a parts source, but in either case I don't think it qualifies for the PNAERC list anymore. So it's been removed. The Mattapan PCC fleet, formerly at 10 cars, now numbers nine.

Philadelphia PCC-II Overhaul Program

A recent post on a PCC group on Facebook, made by a SEPTA employee, brought readers up to date on the overhaul program currently underway at SEPTA. That agency has a fleet of 18 "PCC-II" streetcars - Philadelphia PCC cars that were torn down to their frames and rebuilt by Brookville around 2004-2005, complete with new (though "PCC-inspired") control and motors as well as sealed windows and A/C. After about 15 years the cars were all pulled from service and they're now going through an in-house overhaul. This job, unlike the last one, is generally sympathetic, and they're emerging more-or-less indistinguishable from how they went in.

Of the cars in the fleet (list here - note that this is not an all-inclusive list of cars on PNAERC owned by SEPTA), four have already been overhauled and outshopped: 2332 (outshopped June 2021), 2328 (outshopped August 2021), 2337 (outshopped June 2022), and 2322 (outshopped within the last few weeks). Four more are currently in the shop being overhauled: 2324, 2326, 2327, and 2333. The remaining 10 cars are still waiting their turn. Cars undergoing overhaul have been noted as "undergoing restoration;" cars that haven't yet gone into the shop are "stored operable;" and cars that have been overhauled are described as "operated often." This may be a bit aspirational for the moment, but sooner or later it's bound to come true.

Savannah Birneys surface

Thanks to my father for forwarding this article about two Savannah, Georgia, Birney bodies that have surfaced. The cars were built into a house in Isle of Hope, just south of Savannah, and were discovered when the house was being torn down.

The Savannah system was almost entirely Birneys in later years, I believe. They had 30 Birneys built by St. Louis in 1922 and another eight built by American the following year. A number of the cars were resold as bodies upon retirement in 1946. These two cars look pretty rough, probably in worse shape than the two American-built cars preserved at the Savannah Roundhouse Museum. There's also a Savannah Birney buried in a seaside cabin on Tybee Island and possibly at least one other body preserved elsewhere.

The Isle of Hope Historical Association is currently fundraising to preserve these cars, though how exactly isn't entirely clear, nor is it clear when they stand to be removed from the site of the house (or whether they've already been removed). With so much unknown about these cars, and with preservation far from certain, I haven't added them to the PNAERC list - yet. I did add them on my "non-preserved list" (one of the links on the right side of this page if you're viewing in desktop mode). We'll try and stay tuned and see what happens.

North Texas Historic Transportation confirmed to be defunct

Many thanks to Andy Nold for confirming that the North Texas Historic Transportation group, which I believe had been functionally inoperative for some time, is officially defunct.

Until now, six cars had been listed as owned by NTHT, though the organization does not seem to have owned any of its own property, meaning the six cars were all scattered around the greater Fort Worth area on various other people's properties. Two of the six cars, Tandy Subway 1 and 4, have been scrapped. These two squared-off body rebuilt PCC cars had been stored in a parking lot in Fort Worth and had been offered for sale (see here), but found no takers and have now been cut up. Intriguingly, there may only be one "Winnebago" Tandy car left, the car McKinney Avenue owns and now has stored out of service. Two others, numbers 3 and 6, are on the PNAERC roster as being stored in Brookville, PA, but these may have been scrapped for parts already - I haven't been able to get confirmation one way or another.

The other four cars that were owned by NTHT are all ex-Northern Texas Traction car bodies which, evidently, still exist, and have presumably not been moved from their respective storage locations. There are two streetcars in Azle, Texas, northwest of Fort Worth; a freight motor in Benbrook, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth; and a double-truck Birney on private property within the city of Fort Worth. The PNAERC list has been updated to remove the two scrapped Tandy cars and to list the ex-NTT cars as being under private ownership in their respective locations. Any further information on the condition of these cars, or plans for their future, is always appreciated.

Corrections on Lackawanna 2628

Many thanks to Mike Del Vecchio, who contacted me to set the record straight regarding Lackawanna 2628. This 1930 MU motor car was moved from its home of some 35 years near Rochester, New York, back to home territory in New Jersey back in April as described in this post. At the time, I posted that the car was owned by the Tri-State Railway Historical Society and stored at the Whippany Railway Museum. 

However Mike points out that, in fact, neither of those things are true! The car is actually owned by a real estate developer in Montclair, NJ, called BDP Holdings LLC. This firm evidently owns (or is invested in) the former Lackawanna terminal building in Montclair, which is where 2628 will be put on display as part of a major redevelopment. TSRHS helped set up this whole plan, but does not own the car. Additionally, while 2628 was unloaded at Whippany, it's actually being stored on the Morristown & Erie Railway, whose tracks run past the Whippany museum. The car's PNAERC record has been updated to reflect these corrections. Thanks, Mike!

Muni rail grinder operates

Per this post on Facebook (no log-in required), the Western Railway Museum has returned its Muni rail grinder, SFMR 0109, to operational condition following a 30-year period out of service. The car's PNAERC record has been appropriately updated.

I'm not personally very familiar with 0109, but it's certainly a unique piece. It's one of only three surviving ex-Market Street Railway work cars. It's also one of only a dozen preserved rail grinders on the PNAERC list, and may (now) be the only operational rail grinder in a U.S. trolley museum.

North Shore 162 returns home

North Shore 162, shown in a photo posted by Rob Brogle to Facebook here (no login required), is back in home territory for the first time in nearly 60 years. It's been unloaded in Mukwonago, on the East Troy Electric Railroad, and will be held for future restoration. The car's PNAERC record has been appropriately updated to change its ownership from Connecticut Trolley Museum to ETER. It's in rough shape, but mostly complete and certainly restorable with enough work.

As I've mentioned before, East Troy has been on an acquisition spree lately. They're now up to 25 electric cars, plus a few freight cars that are not on the PNAERC list. But they're somewhat unusual among museums in that most of the preserved cars that passed through East Troy are not currently owned by ETER.

A while back, evidently when I had way too much time on my hands, I made this graph showing the electric cars that I know have passed through preservation in East Troy. The first group in East Troy was The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society. For a while it coexisted with the privately-owned Wisconsin Trolley Museum, which started out in North Prairie, Wisconsin, and then moved to East Troy and renamed itself the East Troy Electric Railroad. This was shortly after TWERHS was "evicted" from the actual East Troy-to-Mukwonago railroad, which was owned by the village of East Troy (confused yet?). In 1988-1989, TWERHS disbanded itself as a museum and sold off its entire collection, mostly to IRM. The size of ETER's collection has risen and fallen over the years. An impressive fleet of South Shore cars was amassed over time, while in the late 2000s and early 2010s there was an aggressive campaign to sell or scrap equipment. But at this point, ETER seems to be on firmer footing - it's no longer privately owned, but is rather run by a more typical nonprofit, and has a solid volunteer base.

As an aside, I should note that a few cars that were sold by TWERHS or ETER were later scrapped by other organizations, and those are shown in the chart as "sold" and not "scrapped." Only cars that were cut up in East Troy - or Mukwonago - are included in the "scrapped" category.

Pullman Electric Car Order List

Among the things that are always helpful in figuring out the histories of preserved electric cars are manufacturer order lists. Order lists for many of the major electric car manufacturers are here. And now, thanks to Bob Webber of the Pullman Library at the Illinois Railway Museum, we can add another. Bob has assembled a list of streetcar and interurban car orders placed with Pullman, located here:

Pullman Electric Car Order List

This list is in a Google Sheets spreadsheet and should be easily searchable. It's drawn from the Pullman electric car order book, which the company kept separate from its steam railroad orders, at least in the early years. For the most part it doesn't include mainline electrics, and does include subway cars, though this isn't 100% consistent.

Looking for information on a specific Pullman order? Contact IRM's Pullman Library to inquire about ordering plans, drawings, photographs, or other documents that may be available.

Charlotte 85 moved to Belmont

I'm a bit late on this one, but I came across a Facebook post from the Belmont Trolley group and noticed that a familiar-looking streetcar could be seen in the background. Sure enough, back on January 3rd of this year, Southern Public Utilities 85, the only preserved streetcar from Charlotte, NC, was moved to a new home in Belmont, NC. The photo above is from the Belmont Trolley Facebook page.

Charlotte 85 was built in 1927 and ran until retirement in 1938, at which point its body was sold. In 1993 the car body was retrieved by the Charlotte Trolley group, restored using trucks and electrical parts salvaged from Melbourne streetcars, and put into service (using a towed generator) on a short stretch of track in Charlotte. The right-of-way was later subsumed into the Charlotte light rail line, and for a brief period car 85 shared the light rail tracks, but at some point it was taken out of service and put into storage. In March 2016 it was sent to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer.

In Belmont, it's currently stored in the city's public works building (along with two foreign single-truckers, an Oporto car and a Greek car that is itself another refugee from Charlotte Trolley). The plans are to rebuild it with some sort of battery-powered system so that it can run on a short tourist line on the north side of town. Car 85 has had its ownership updated and I've added Belmont Trolley to the PNAERC database, as this is their first domestic electric car acquisition.

For its part, NCTM in Spencer is still home to two electrics on the list - the P&N boxcab locomotive and a New Orleans streetcar in storage - as well as this thing, which is not currently on the list due to a lack of information on it.

Two cars deaccessed by Seashore

As of this past weekend, the Seashore Trolley Museum has deaccessed two of the cars in its collection and is making them available to other organizations.

The first, shown above in 2015 (both photos in this post from this page), is South Shore 32. It's a typical coach from that railroad, built by Standard Steel in 1929, and given how many identical cars are preserved elsewhere, it's not particularly significant. It's in rough shape, and all of its underbody electrical equipment was removed when it was moved to Seashore in the 1980s, but it's complete insofar as all of the equipment is on hand.

The other car is somewhat rarer: Long Island Rail Road 4137, an MP54A1 commuter MU car built by AC&F in 1930. This car is complete, though I don't think it has run at Seashore and it too is in rough shape (though I believe its steel roof has held up better than the canvas one on car 32). There aren't too many LIRR electric cars preserved: only five right now, of which one other besides this car has also been deaccessed by its owner.

It makes a lot of sense for Seashore to deaccess these cars. Neither has ever run in Kennebunkport, as far as I know, and given their huge size neither is a good candidate for normal operation at Seashore in the future. With luck, one or both cars may even find a new home elsewhere.

The Trolley Car Diner Resurfaces

One of the better-known streetcar diners, and one of only a handful included on the PNAERC list, has reappeared after about two years on the lam. Philadelphia 2134, the PCC car shown above, was for many years known as the Trolley Car Diner, an ice cream stand located on Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy. But the diner closed in October 2019, and on April 10, 2020, the car was loaded onto a truck and carted off to parts unknown.

It's now reappeared, still in its hometown, now located in the East Kensington section of north Philadelphia. The photo above, posted to Facebook (no login required), shows the car on display in what is evidently a small "wine garden" that is currently being built (conveniently enough, Google Street View passed this location in May 2022 and the car hadn't arrived yet, so we can confidently nail down its arrival date to sometime in the last 60 days or so).

So the car's owner has been updated to the Mural City Wine Garden. I listed its owner from 2020 to 2022 as "private owner," since it seems to have been sold back in 2019-2020 by the now-defunct Mount Airy diner but its current home didn't exist yet. It appears to still be on its trucks, though of course hollowed out inside. We'll see how it fares in its new location.

Toronto PCC to return home

TTC 4601 in 2000

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson for sending me this post on Facebook (no login required) courtesy of the Michigan Transit Museum. For about 11 years now, MTM has stored the two PCC cars in its possession - Detroit 268, acquired via a stint in Mexico City, and Toronto 4601 - on private property near Port Huron, Michigan. The Toronto car, which has no local significance and was never regauged from Toronto wide gauge, was deaccessed back in 2015 and it seems the car has finally found a taker. Halton County, which is already home to three 4600-series rebuilt PCC cars, is planning on moving car 4601 back north of the border sometime soon. The MTM announcement states that the intention is to restore the car. This is the latest example of an organization taking the positive step of deaccessing an unneeded piece of equipment that is using resources better applied elsewhere.

The TTC 4600s are an interesting subspecies of PCC. They were heavily overhauled by the TTC between 1986 and 1992, using class A-8 cars built by St. Louis for TTC in 1951 as the starting points. They were largely rebuilt in-kind, at least mechanically, and were painted in traditional colors for use on the Harbourfront Line. As such, when they were retired only a few years later in 1996, they were in excellent condition body-wise and were viewed as prime candidates for preservation. All 19 of the cars rebuilt for the 4600 program survive today, including two kept by TTC as heritage cars and six in regular heritage line service in Kenosha, WI. The remaining 11 cars ended up at museums: three at Halton County, one at MTM (soon to go to Halton County), two each at McKinney Avenue and National Capital, two at non-operating museums in Arizona, and one in Edmonton.

New York subway car being auctioned off

Now is your chance to have your very own New York subway car. NYCTA 9075, an R33-ML type car built in 1963, is being auctioned off by the Borough of Queens according to this article (and a few others). The article says that this is the last car of its kind, but that's manifestly not true, as there are at least ten other R33 cars in preservation and likely more knocking around the subway system. Car 9075's record has been updated to reflect that it's for sale, and with luck I'll find out who buys it and where it ends up going, even if it's into a scrap dumpster.

Some real money was put into plinthing this car back in 2005, including a substantial concrete pad, but it was probably inevitable that its owners would tire of maintaining it. I was surprised to see, in one of the photos, that at least part of the car's interior looks completely original (well, end-of-service original). I had thought it was being used as some sort of visitor's center, but perhaps it was just an exhibit piece. But electric cars put to uses like this usually have a finite shelf life (example). I'm surprised the relatively nearby MPB-54 chamber of commerce is still in use.

As an aside, if you're wondering why these cars are on the PNAERC list when cars on the ground (i.e. diners, private homes, and other "chicken coops") aren't, the reason is trucks. If a car is complete enough to retain its trucks and underbody, then I'll typically consider it sufficiently intact to be considered "preserved" even if it's in non-railroad use.

Oklahoma interurban car burned

Thanks to Andy Nold for confirming that Pittsburg County Railway 32 has, indeed, been destroyed by fire. The photo above was sent courtesy of John Myers. As such, the car has now been removed from the PNAERC list. It's too bad, as it was an attractive little interurban coach built by Niles in 1907. Its condition had been steadily deteriorating, though, and some years back the Southwest Missouri car next to it had rotted to the point of collapsing entirely. With PCR 32 now gone, there are only three electric cars on the PNAERC list in the state of Oklahoma: a Texas Electric freight trailer and two Birneys, one in Muskogee and one in Tulsa.

Another car headed to East Troy

East Troy is on an acquisition spree, as noted in this post from their Facebook page over the weekend (no log-in required). The next car on their list, due to arrive sometime later this month, is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 162 (its owner will be updated once the car is physically moved). Following the recent dismantling of car 154, this is now one of two surviving cars from the North Shore's original order for steel cars, the other being car 160 at IRM. Car 162 was built by Brill in 1915 and retired from service when the North Shore quit in 1963. At that time it went to Niskayuna, New York, to be a part of the planned American Museum of Electricity. Unfortunately this project never got off the ground, and car 162 (and 710, which was scrapped last year) went to the Connecticut Trolley Museum in 1971.

It has sat there ever since, never operating (I believe it may have been stripped of some metal while in Niskayuna), but with a tarpaper roof that protected it somewhat better than car 710. Its condition is very rough, no doubt, but largely complete. Once restored, it would be the second North Shore interurban car at East Troy.

This also means that of the six electrics deaccessed by CTM in 2018 (article here), only two are really still in limbo: the mainline electrics, LIRR 4153 and CN 6714. Car 162 has now been sold, one CTA 'L' car and one North Shore car have been scrapped, and the other CTA car - CTA 4175 - is, according to photos taken a few weeks ago, still in partially-scrapped "can-opener victim" condition from last fall. But its ultimate fate can hardly be in doubt. Anyone interested in an MP54?

ON AN UNRELATED TOPIC... a comment was posted that Pittsburg County Railway 32, a wood interurban car body on display in McAlester, Oklahoma, has been destroyed by fire. Can anyone confirm or offer more details?

Removals

I decided it was time for a bit of spring cleaning on the PNAERC roster - and that means removing cars that probably shouldn't be on the list. First up is Tidewater Power Company 108, which has been on the list for a few years under the ownership of the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History in Wrightsville, NC. I'd added this car (with a notation that one end was missing) based on some less-than-ideal photos taken at the WBMoH, however I just came across this video which shows - at about the 1:40 mark - that in fact a lot more of the car than just one end is missing! It looks like the only parts there are one end and about half of one side of the car. Oops. There are a few cars on the list that have had their length reduced, or are missing an end, but if three-quarters of the car is gone then it doesn't qualify.

And then we come to a handful of cars that are parts of diners. The first is Bamberger 128, shown at the top of this post. This was one of the "Bullet" cars built for the Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville in 1932 and resold in 1939 to the Bamberger. Car 128 was one of three or four that were moved to the Trolley Square mall in 1972, but then in 1986 they were evicted when they'd outlived their usefulness. Car 128 was moved to Springville, UT, and became the Art City Trolley Restaurant. It's been on the PNAERC list forever, but it's been bothering me because by all rights it shouldn't be there - I don't consider cars that are part of buildings to be "preserved" even if their traction heritage is played up. And this one has been modified more than some. So for the sake of consistency, car 128 is now off the list, leaving just two of the Bamberger "Bullets" considered to be preserved.

And finally - for now - are Skagit River Railway 18 and 21, two ex-Oregon Electric wood interurban cars ensconced in a restaurant in Seattle. On the same note as Bamberger 128, these don't really qualify as "preserved" by the standards I've been using, any more than other "trolley diners" scattered around the country do. One of the cars especially is really buried in the building. Perhaps they will be rescued by a museum someday, but until then, they're off the list.

So there you go. But fear not! I'm still tracking these cars, and various others that don't qualify as "preserved," on my relatively new "non-preserved electric cars" Google sheet. If you know of an electric car body in your neck of the woods (or any other neck of the woods) that is missing from this list, drop me a line.

And if you notice another car on the list that doesn't seem like it fits the criteria, let me know about that too. Diners and the like - buildings that are built out of electric cars - generally don't qualify. However if the car is complete enough to still be on trucks, or if it's a museum display (think Tupelo or Gardner), then I consider it preserved.

Lackawanna 2628 Returns to New Jersey

It's a heavy news week - when it rains it pours! Less than a week after the plan was announced, Lackawanna MU car 2628 has returned to New Jersey from its 37-year home in Industry, New York. The Tri-State Railway Historical Society posted on their Facebook page (no log-in required) with photos of the car arriving at the Whippany Railway Museum in Whippany, NJ, including the photo above. Many thanks to Mike Dodge for bringing this news to my attention!

As mentioned recently, car 2628 is now owned by TSRHS* and they plan for it to be cosmetically restored and placed on display at the old DL&W Montclair, NJ, terminal. For the moment, since it's physically located at Whippany* along with (restored) fellow DL&W car 2454, its "owner" has been updated in PNAERC to the Whippany Railway Museum with a notation that the car is actually owned by TSRHS and is only being stored at WRM.*

*EDIT: Please note corrections here!

La Crosse city car saved

News has arrived that Mississippi Valley Public Service 56, a double-truck city car from La Crosse, Wisconsin, has been acquired for preservation by the East Troy Electric Railroad. The car is a new addition to the PNAERC roster, as it was formerly in private ownership in northern Wisconsin but details on its whereabouts and status were so sketchy that I'd never felt confident in adding it. Now, since its arrival at Phantom Woods yesterday, it definitely qualifies as preserved. Many thanks to ETER volunteer Eric Zabelny for the unloading photos.

Car 56 was built by St. Louis in 1916 for Wisconsin Railway Light & Power, which was later combined with the city system in Winona, MN and rechristened Mississippi Valley Public Service. It's a pretty interesting car - it strongly resembles cars built by St. Louis for Evanston Railway and Johnstown Traction, but this series was fitted with unusual St. Louis 109A maximum traction trucks. It also had K-51 controllers, a type which doesn't appear anywhere else on my list. It's one of three surviving cars from MVPS, but the only double-truck car - the other two are a La Crosse Birney (which, ironically, was deaccessed by East Troy 20 years ago and I believe is in storage in its hometown) and a Winona single-trucker that was the subject of a major and recently completed restoration in Excelsior, MN.

It's nice to see this car saved for preservation. And it's the first time in a while that one of the larger, established, operating trolley museums has acquired an unrestored car body for preservation. The practice was pretty common in the 1980s and 1990s, with Seashore (the "last roundup") and IRM (the rather less dignified "body snatchers") leading the way, but by my count the last time one of the larger trolley museums acquired an unrestored car body that wasn't already preserved elsewhere was 2013, when Edmonton acquired a Regina single-trucker. A number of bodies have been acquired in the interim by smaller organizations, from Hoosier Heritage and Old Pueblo to a gaggle of local history groups, but the larger museums have largely abandoned the acquisition of car bodies.

Changeover!

It's official: we've switched over to the new version of the PNAERC database! Last night our webmaster, Jeff Hakner, officially pointed the main PNAERC site at www.bera.org/pnaerc.html to the new database - formerly known as the "beta test" site - that we have been keeping updated with regular changes. The old database, which had last been updated in 2014, is no longer accessible. We were still getting the occasional query referencing the old database, so this should eliminate one source of confusion.

While we are able to make changes to the data on the site immediately as needed, the photo/media sections are still not able to be updated. So we realize that a lot of the photos are out-of-date, or links broken, but we are still working on the mechanism to be able to update those. Once that is done, I promise that I'll put the call out for recent photos!

Buckeye Lake changes

One of the largest private collections of traction equipment in the country is Buckeye Lake Trolley, a collection east of Columbus, Ohio, near its namesake city. I noticed recently that additional buildings have been constructed on the BLT property, which is a good thing of course. But one result is that some of the equipment that was there has "disappeared" - either into the buildings or into a scrap bin, I don't know. So a few of the cars in the collection have had their statuses changed to "unknown" to reflect this uncertainty. Any updates are greatly appreciated!

A quick run-down of the 21 pieces of equipment located at the main site (follow along using the roster linked above):

Several cars are easy because they're still visible on Google aerial views. These include the three PAT 4000-series rebuilt PCCs, two ex-SLPS/ex-Shaker Heights PCCs, two C&LE freight motors, and a Philadelphia snow sweeper. So that's eight cars.

Then there's the equipment that I believe is probably stored in the barns that have been built over the past decade or so. This includes a trio of quite historic interurban car bodies, CSW&C 121, LSE 7, and CD&M 500, as well as the body of Columbus streetcar 664. Now we're up to twelve "likely" accounted for.

The next group is equipment that's unique, but in rough shape. These could be stored inside or they may not have fared well enough to be moved, I just don't know. Fostoria & Fremont 40, Toledo & Eastern 40, PSTC 63, PAT 1976, and Lake Shore Electric snow sweeper "C" all fall into this category. A few of these cars used to be stored out near the street and are no longer in their longtime spots. I've changed their statuses to "situation unknown."

That leaves just four cars. Two are ex-Cleveland, ex-Toronto, ex-Shaker PCC cars in truly terrible shape (all cars from this series suffered horribly from salt damage owing to their years north of the border). The other two, a Pittsburgh snow sweeper and a cut-down CTA work motor, were only on hand as parts sources, so they may still be knocking around or may have been "parted out." All four of these have also had their statuses changed to "situation unknown."

Lackawanna MU car to be restored and plinthed

Photo courtesy Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum

The Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum today announced new plans for its DL&W MU motor car, car 2628. The car is to be transferred in the near future from its current location near Rochester back to its old home territory in northern New Jersey. Ownership will be transferred to the Tri-State Railway Historical Society and the car is to undergo a complete cosmetic restoration in Morristown, after which it will be placed on display at the old DL&W Montclair, NJ station. The Montclair station was the terminus of the first of three DL&W lines to be electrified (the other two being the Gladstone branch and the "main line" to Dover), in 1930, but the Montclair line was rerouted to avoid the old station in the early 1980s and since that time the station has been adaptively reused as a shopping mall.

The PNAERC record for car 2628 hasn't been updated yet, other than to remove the notation - there since 2019 - that the car was available for sale. I'll wait until it's been physically moved to change its ownership But this is certainly good news. The car was one of 141 identical motor cars built in 1930 by Pullman for the Lackawanna electrification project, but while quite a few of these cars are still around, vanishingly few of them are complete. Car 2628 is in that elite group, though its condition has suffered from long-term outdoor storage. In fact, there are only four cars of this type that I'm reasonably confident are complete, with the others being at Steamtown, Mad River & NKP, and URHS. None of those seem to be on anybody's short list for restoration. If the announced plans come to fruition and 2628 is indeed cosmetically - and authentically - restored, it will be the first Lackawanna motor car, and only the second MU car from the railroad, to be restored as an electric car.

Horsepower

Over the weekend I was briefly loaned a book that was issued by the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum back in the 1970s, when it was the Arden Trolley Museum. It was a reprint of a 1925 Westinghouse motor catalog, and listed most - if not all - of the motors Westinghouse had built for street railway use up to that time. Motor number, horsepower, voltage, RPM, and other information was included, along with notes. This has allowed me to add horsepower ratings to a lot of the equipment on the PNAERC list (fun fact: 757 cars on the PNAERC list have, or ought to have, Westinghouse motors, according to my admittedly incomplete listings). The "total horsepower" field may not be all that tremendously fascinating, but it can be useful information. So, does anyone have a similar catalog of GE motors? Or a later Westinghouse catalog that would include post-1925 types?

And in completely unrelated news, the above photo was posted today on the PCC Trolley Club Facebook page by Michael McKinnon. It shows MBTA 3265, which is the first of the Mattapan-Ashmont cars to go through the latest generation of overhaul, and has now shown back up on its old stomping grounds, presumably for burn-in testing. It looks like this rebuild was largely in-kind, and happily the car has kept its attractive orange/cream/silver BER/MTA era livery. This car went to Everett Shops for rebuild back in 2019 along with car 3234, which is still being worked on. I've read that car 3260, which was damaged in a wreck in 2017, may be next in line for work.

Liberty Bell Jewett removed from list

This photo, taken today by John Petsche and posted to the Ahead of the Torch Facebook page (no log-in required), shows what remains of Lehigh Valley Transit 805. This "Liberty Bell Jewett" was built for the LVT in 1912 and was one of the cars not rebuilt as freight motors. I'm not sure what its history was after the LVT quit, but like identical car 801 it ended up as a body and was eventually picked up by someone looking to preserve it. Unlike 801, it seems that it was in markedly decrepit condition even when initially earmarked for salvation, and thereafter was stored outside on a truck trailer just off the highway in Penn Allen, PA. As can be inferred from the above photo, in recent years it's been almost totally consumed by trees during the summer, and it's obvious that the roof is starting to cave in. So while this car had been included on the PNAERC list since it seemed to be set aside for preservation, it no longer seems that the car is either (1) being actively maintained or preserved in any way currently, or (2) likely to survive much longer. So it's off the list. That leaves three preserved LVT cars - the aforementioned 801, car 1030 at Seashore, and Key System 271 at Rio Vista.

South Shore trailer moves

No sooner does the South Shore Line Museum Project announce itself, than it expands its collection. Notice was posted online that South Shore 203, the last surviving coach trailer from that interurban line, left East Troy's site near Mukwonago, WI, today en route to the SSLMP. The photo above, by Joe Stupar, dates to 2010 and shows the car's current condition. This car, built by Pullman in 1927, was part of the National Park Service collection that was conveyed to East Troy back in 2010. It had been stored at a steel plant in East Chicago, IN, (and before then in Beech Grove, IN) along with three coaches and a combine - all from the South Shore - but when the NPS decided to finally give up on plans to create a heritage interurban railway, these cars went to East Troy, the only museum to regularly operate South Shore cars. The only restored car of the lot was backdated car 33, which has since entered service at East Troy. The others, including car 203, were in various states of "rough" and have been kept indoors but unserviceable.

Car 203 is the last South Shore trailer; this particular variety has fared particularly poorly in preservation. After the railroad was abandoned and the cars sold off, there were five or six 200-series trailers saved. But one by one they ended up scrapped, with car 205 the most recent to go, a victim of the IMOTAC dissolution debacle. Interurban coach trailers as a category are rare, and by my count car 203 is one of only five complete examples in existence. SSLMP may not have a place to display or operate the car yet, but it seems a given that this last surviving example of its type will have a secure spot in its new home.

New Museum in Indiana

There's a new museum in town! Well, "museum" may be a bit premature, given that there's currently no site that's open to the public and it calls itself a "museum project" (emphasis mine). But the newly-minted South Shore Line Museum Project, or SSLMP, has indeed announced itself, and I've dutifully updated the PNAERC roster accordingly.

The SSLMP website has an admirable amount of information about its collection of rolling stock (and various other topics, too). A total of 12 cars are listed: a wood combine, six steel coaches, a dining car, a parlor-observation-buffet car, a Birney, a steeplecab, and a line car. This comprises the collection of Bob Harris, and for the past few years has been listed on the PNAERC roster under "Private owner - Michigan City" since most of the equipment is stored in Michigan City, Indiana.

Most of these cars are now listed on the PNAERC list under SSLMP, though there are a couple of changes. The dining car owned by SSLMP is a steam road car that stands in for similar cars once borrowed by the Chicago South Shore & South Bend interurban line, so it doesn't qualify. Two of the coaches are stored at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, and are listed under that name on PNAERC. And a Chicago 'L' car apparently owned by the Chicago Transit Authority is stored at the SSLMP site in Michigan City, so is listed under SSLMP on my roster even though it's (understandably) not included by the organization among its collection. Confusing enough? Good.

I've now designated the organization as an historical group (see update below), given that it is a nonprofit, although I believe that Mr. Harris retains an ownership stake in the equipment. Several of the South Shore cars in the collection have gone through a few different owners "in theory" even though they may not have technically changed hands - previous names under which Mr. Harris has operated include the Overhead & Third Rail Museum Group in the 1980s and the RAIL Foundation, which evidently existed from the 1980s until about 2015. These organizations have evidently involved various principals in leadership, but their equipment collections have always been Mr. Harris' own collection of interurban cars. And so it is with SSLMP.

UPDATE: Mr. Harris has written and pointed out that SSLMP is a nonprofit (official tax-exempt status is in the works) organization that is the brainchild of Dave Rearick of Chesterton. The purpose of the organization is to complete the work envisioned by the National Park Service back in the 1980s, of preserving and interpreting the history of the South Shore. Mr. Haris is certainly supporting this effort strongly, and is currently serving as legal counsel for SSLMP, but is hoping to gradually draw down his involvement over time as circumstances permit. Thanks to Bob for the information!

Philly Six epilogue

So admittedly this doesn't affect the PNAERC list directly, but it was kind of interesting (and a little bizarre) so here it goes. The "Philly Six" were a half dozen ex-SEPTA PCC cars that were stored in increasingly derelict condition in North Philadelphia for many years. Then about a year ago, the cars were sliced up in various strange and interesting ways and scrapped, as outlined here and here. But now one of them has popped back up!

Well, not really. The above photo, posted on Facebook by E. Marquise Sanders, shows the front end of car 2141 mounted to a wall at a bar called Kensington Pub located in North Philadelphia. The owners were considerate enough to put the car's original number back on it and even painted the thing in what appear to be largely correct colors (not strictly appropriate to its post-GOH condition, but certainly directionally correct). Now this car is definitely not going back onto the PNAERC list - there are a handful of "pieces of cars" like this around the country, and unless it's a complete car that's just been shortened a bit and put back together (like this one, for instance), I exclude them from being considered "preserved." But it's still kind of interesting. Now you know where to stop for refreshments the next time you're in North Philly.

StLIM&S MU car on the chopping block

A post here on the Ahead of the Torch Facebook page (no log-in required) relates that Erie-Lackawanna 3565, a typical Lackawanna MU motor car, is set to be cut up for scrap sometime soon. It's owned by the St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern, a tourist railroad near Cape Girardeau, MO whose regular operating consist includes a pair of Illinois Central MU trailers, one of which - car 1345 - is the last surviving IC MU car with air-operated doors that was likely pulled by steam for a brief period. Anyway, car 3565 is one of a large (though steadily decreasing) number of Lack MU motor cars in existence - not including 3565, there are 33 cars of this series on the PNAERC list. And for quite some time this car has been essentially derelict, so its impending loss is neither surprising nor particularly lamentable. I'm not certain of its precise history, but it came to the StLIM&S from the late Indiana Museum of Transportation & Communication, probably in the 1980s or early 1990s, and may never have been used at all in Missouri. Above photo by Shawn Friedrich.

Pittsburgh PCC off list

Well, apparently it's Pittsburgh PCC Week. The latest update following the updated information on Pittsburgh 4006 is that a different PCC car from that city, car 1705, has been scrapped. This was another one of the 1700-series cars built by St. Louis in 1949. It was sold in 1996 to Power Superconductor Applications in New Castle, PA, where it joined several other Pittsburgh PCC cars. In 2013, as PSA was getting rid of its last PCCs, this car was acquired by the Midwest Electric Railway Museum in Mt. Pleasant, IA. The photo above is a screen grab from this video of the car shortly after acquisition. MERM had hoped to add an all-electric, and therefore all-weather, car to their fleet, but the car's attractive appearance belied its true condition and it turned out to have been extensively stripped of parts. A proposed sale to an ill-fated start-up railway museum in California in 2018 fell through and car 1705 was sold to a scrapyard in 2019. It has been removed from the list.

The Pittsburgh 1700s, while still not exactly uncommon in preservation, are certainly seeing their ranks thinned. Not counting cars rebuilt as 4000s, and excluding six cars in deplorable condition at VESCO, there are now only six 1700s left.

Pittsburgh 4000 goes missing

Thanks to Nicholas Katz for pointing out that Port Authority Transit 4006, which has been sitting for around 15 years in a parking lot at the west end of the truncated Superior Viaduct in Cleveland, has gone missing. The car - shown above in a 2019 photo from here - is one of the PCC cars heavily remanufactured by PAT in the 1980s and renumbered into the 4000-series. This car was rebuilt in 1987 using 1949-vintage PCC car 1767 as a core and was retired in 1998. For a few years it was stored in Columbus behind a semi-derelict industrial facility on West Nationwide Boulevard (I recall seeing it there in 2002) but then that facility got renovated and sometime in the mid-2000s it showed up in the parking lot at 2401 West Superior Viaduct in Cleveland.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Wesley Paulson and Dave Hamley for getting to the bottom of this one. Car 4006 was indeed moved back to Buckeye Lake, Ohio, where its owner is based, in August 2021. There it joins fellow 4000-series cars 4011 and 4012 along with a collection of other miscellaneous cars.