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!