New History for an Old Streetcar

I got a truly fascinating email today from Charlie Lowe of the New York Museum of Transportation in Rush, New York. He took a look through the Pullman order list that was recently added to our Car Builder Order Lists page and found something that solves a longstanding question about a car at NYMT - and gives that car a rather different history.

The car in question is Rochester sand car 0243, shown above. This car was acquired by NYMT from Magee in the early 1970s and, as it was in poor shape, it was disassembled. Unfortunately it has never been reassembled, but the parts are there and someday that will hopefully happen. Its history has been described as: built 1891 by Stephenson as Rochester Railway 162; to New York State Railways (NYSR) Rochester Lines 162 in 1909; renumbered to 243 in 1918; rebuilt to sand car 1918; renumbered to 0243 in 1930; NYSR Rochester Lines became Rochester Transit in 1938; to Rochester Museum of Arts & Sciences 1941, to Rail City (on loan from RMAS) c1956, to Magee (still on loan from RMAS) 1965, back to RMAS in 1973, and to NYMT in 1987.

However Charlie reports that back in 1941, the Rochester Museum of Arts & Sciences had asked Rochester Transit for samples of their oldest and newest cars. They received an hold horsecar (still in existence today); car 0243; and a "modern" Peter Witt, which sadly was too big for them to store indoors and sat outside until it was scrapped in 1950. Anyway, when Rochester had first electrified back in 1890, they had ordered 100 single-truckers from Gilbert. Charlie's question had always been, if the Gilbert cars (of which some were evidently still around in 1941) were older than 0243, why was 0243 chosen for preservation?

The answer lies in the Pullman order list. In 1887, order #508 is listed for 10 cars for the Rochester City & Brighton Railway (actually the Rochester City & Brighton Railroad) for closed streetcars numbered 162-171. Since the car at NYMT is known to have been ex-162, that means it wasn't built by Stephenson in 1891, it was built by Pullman in 1887. That also explains why it has some characteristics of an electrified horsecar and why it has a McGuire Columbian truck (possibly the last one in existence anywhere), a design dating to 1892. This car was probably electrified around 1892-1893 as the Rochester system elected to rebuild one of its newer horsecars to bolster the original fleet of 100 Gilbert electrics. It was in passenger service until rebuilt as a sand car in 1918.

Charlie also points out that the car was renumbered from 162 to 243 while it was still in passenger service, probably around 1909, so my previous listing was incorrect in saying that it was renumbered in 1918. There's a photograph of car 243 in revenue service in Canandaigua, which was a part of the Rochester Lines system.

Anyway, I've updated car 0243's history per Charlie's research. It's now tied for the eighth-oldest electric car on the PNAERC list. Many thanks to Charlie for sending along this remarkable information!