New Type of LRV Preserved

The Western Railway Museum is the proud new owner of a 1995-vintage Los Angeles light rail vehicle, class P2020 car 164, shown above in an image from the WRM Facebook page. It arrived late last week and they've already put power to it, though I'm not sure whether it's "motivating" yet.

This is the second car from the Los Angeles light rail system to be preserved at a railway museum; car 144 was acquired by Southern California Railway Museum, nee Orange Empire, in 2018. For five years now, car 144 has been the newest piece of equipment on the entire PNAERC list, but of course now it's been supplanted by car 164. WRM's new car is very similar to the type P865 car at SCRM, but the 1995 order from Nippon-Sharyo for these cars included some additional automated train operation functionality.

WRM is also keeping up a steady pace of acquisitions - since 2020 they've now added five cars to their collection, more than any other trolley museum during that period. They also now have the distinction of being the only museum with three different types of LRVs (Boeing-Vertol LRV, Siemens U2, and Nippon-Sharyo P2020), and the only museum with LRVs from three different cities (San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles).