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!