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.