Boston Snow Plow Scrapped

Many thanks to Jordan Helzer for confirming that Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority 5122, a snow plow converted from a Type 3 semi-convertible built in 1908, has been scrapped. As noted here, the car was preserved at the Seashore Trolley Museum from 1995 to 2020 but that year it was sold (sans trucks, which were retained) to the Samuel Slater Experience in Webster, MA. This newly opened museum needed a streetcar for static display and 5122 was the first one chosen (the image above, showing the car being craned onto a truck for transport, is from Seashore's 2020 annual report).

Within months of acquiring the car, however, Samuel Slater Experience acquired a second car. This one, a heavily rebuilt Los Angeles Railway single-trucker, is far from local but was acquired in more-or-less complete condition and with an excellent cosmetic appearance. It has since been installed in the museum's building in Webster. I had tried reaching out to SSE to inquire about car 5122, with no luck, but Jordan has found that the plow's body has indeed been cut up. It has now been removed from the PNAERC roster.

This is not a huge loss. There are five other Type 3 cars still in existence, all of them at Seashore, including one or two that were much less heavily rebuilt than 5122 and at least one that in recent years has been kept in operational condition and used regularly as a switching locomotive.