Wednesday, February 16, 2022

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.

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