The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum is on a collecting spree. After acquiring the "Terrible Trolley" PCC car earlier this summer, on Friday they took delivery of a far more inherently historic car: Shamokin & Mt. Carmel Transit 33. S&MC 33 was built by Brill in 1905 and it's a surprisingly rare example of a Brill "rubber stamp" semi-convertible. Cars of this design ran on a huge number of streetcar lines, especially small-town lines, in the early years of the century. But most were long gone by the time the preservation movement rose up, so the truly "off-the-shelf" Brill semi-convertible is nearly extinct. In fact, this is arguably the last example of the classic type.
This car was built for the S&MC and ran on that system until it was retired in 1938 (in-service photo here). It was then acquired by the Knoebel's Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, where for many decades it sat underneath a large shed, largely out of sight for much of that time. The family elected to dispose of the car this year and, fortunately, elected to convey it to PTM as indicated by the museum's post here.
It’s conceivable that this car body was the prototype for the Pennsylvania Scale Models HO version, later produced by Bowser (both fine and fairly affordable units of their day) and was later copied by Bachmann - raising the status of the design as a classic. It’s great to see in preservation. Is there a work car somewhere with examples of the underbody configuration?
ReplyDeleteThe supposed "link" to an in-service photo isn't live.
ReplyDeleteOops! Thanks for the note, Larry. The link has now been added.
ReplyDelete