Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200 update

A big thank you goes to Thomas Mafrici, who has sent along photos showing recent progress on the restoration of Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200. He has been rebuilding this historic wooden interurban, the last surviving car from any of the interurban lines that once radiated from Syracuse, in Cicero, New York. Our previous update of his progress was in May 2021.

Work at that time was focused on the roof, while recent progress has concentrated on rebuilding the end of the car, which was largely missing. Above, a new corner post and end framing is visible.

This corner of the car was simply gone when Mr. Mafrici acquired the car. A very impressive amount of new wood is going into this old interurban car.

The craftsmanship on this door lintel is beautiful.

For comparison, this is what the end of the car looked like when work began. Compare this with the first photo in this post, taken of the same location on the car.

And here's something interesting: Mr. Mafrici acquired this drawing of the car along with the body itself. This drawing appears to have come from the Cincinnati Car Company, which built SLS&N 200.

MU Cars to SMS Rail Lines

Thanks to Marc Glucksman of River Rail Photo for alerting me to the fact that the three Lackawanna MU motor cars formerly at the Stourbridge Line tourist railroad in Pennsylvania have, in fact, been purchased by SMS Rail Lines in New Jersey. The three cars - 3509, 3519, and 3596 - were all built in 1930 by Pullman and were modified as locomotive-hauled coaches by the Stourbridge Line. As sometimes happens, I'm a bit late on this one - photos here show that the cars were at SMS in 2021, likely the year they arrived there. The image above, taken by Tim Darnell, shows car 3519 in November 2021 with its step wells off, suggesting that the cars may have arrived not long before that. The PNAERC roster has been updated to reflect that all three cars are now in storage at SMS.

Because of a quirk of how I maintain the PNAERC roster, this has also resulted in another car having its "owner" changed. There are a number of cars on the list that are not physically located at the site of their owner - either they're on loan, or they're out for repair, or they're at a satellite location of some sort. In these cases, I do one of two things based on the car's physical location. If it's located somewhere already on PNAERC, like another museum, then the car is listed with that collection rather than its legal owner (and its owner is noted in the comments). If you're visiting Halton County and you come across this car, it's easy to find without a lot of searching. However if a car is located somewhere not on PNAERC - a random workshop, railroad siding, field, or somewhere else that may be tough to identify - then it's listed under its legal owner with a disclaimer about its actual location (example).

Which is the long way of saying that the three Lackawanna MU cars were the only electrics actually owned by the Stourbridge Line, but Scranton Transit 505 has been in Honesdale, PA, for major body work. Without other electrics on site, I've switched its "owner" field from Stourbridge Line back to its actual legal owner, Electric City Trolley Museum, with a comment that it's located in Honesdale. So there you go.

Amsterdam, New York car dismantled

Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville streetcar 29, shown above in an Owen Dalton photo from a couple of years ago and featured a couple of years ago on this blog, is no more. Marc Glucksman of River Rail Photo alerted me to the fact that it had been scrapped, and Ann from the Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam, New York - the streetcar's former location - kindly filled in the details via email. It seems that the car had been privately owned and moved to a spot behind the museum back in 2015. The owner intended to restore the car for display, but this work never commenced and the car's condition steadily deteriorated. The museum was forced to demand the car's removal last year, and the owner - evidently unable to find another site for it - dismantled the car in November. The car was somewhat historic, as the only FJ&G streetcar in existence and a rare Wason pre-Birney single-trucker, but was obviously in poor shape. It has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Mexico City Work Motor Identified

Thanks to a fascinating Facebook page I stumbled upon called Tranvias de Mexico, I have now managed to identify a piece of equipment that formerly was listed as "number unknown." The car in question is Servicio de Transportes Electricos del Distrito Federal 1422, shown here, which was restored and placed on static display at the transit agency's museum in Mexico City about 15 years ago. I knew that the car had been in the 1400-series on SDTE, but until now I never knew its exact number, since the car was never lettered after restoration for some reason. Its PNAERC record has now been updated.

I'm still not clear on when this car was retired. The above photo, from the same Facebook page, shows it late in its service life and possibly after retirement - to the left is SDTE 1303, a single-truck line car whose body is preserved at the same museum as 1422. But it appears that it was simply kept stored at Tetepilco Shops for years after retirement until the transit agency built its little museum there at Tetepilco in 2006. The work car is interesting not only because gondola motors like this are very rare in preservation, but also because it may have the last extant pair of Brill 23G trucks. They're a pretty weird and distinctive design that Mexico City seemed to like using for its work cars.