Holy Moly

As I've been slowly but steadily going through the database trying to find updated photos, I've come across a few surprises. Today's was the discovery that Denver Tramways 54, which had been listed under the ownership of Old Spaghetti Factory, hasn't actually been owned by OSF for five years. The car hasn't gone anywhere, but OSF closed their Denver location in 2018 and, as they have done in other markets, abandoned the streetcar in place.

However, the restaurant's space was renovated by a pop culture-themed indoor mini-golf/bar/restaurant establishment (I have no idea), which kept the car in place. The photo above, from this article, shows that the new owners retained both the car's historic fleet number and its non-historic OSF paint scheme. The company, called Urban Putt, opened near the end of 2019 (oops) but apparently stayed open until they were acquired, or changed their name, within the last few months to Holey Moley. So, car 54 is still in place in a mini-golf/bar/restaurant setting. Its ownership in PNAERC has been updated accordingly.

Streetcar for Sale

It was only a month or so ago that Los Angeles Transit Lines 1435 came up on this very blog. It took me that long to figure out where it had ended up (the answer was the Southern California Fairgrounds in Perris, California). But it appears that it's not sticking around: it's just been listed for sale.

The photos are from the auction website where it's being sold here (link may not work for more than a few days). The listing says it needs to be removed from its current location by September 21st, which is in just a couple of days, so that's not auspicious. It remains to be seen what happens to the car after that.

Car 1435 is a Class H-3 double-truck steel car built by St. Louis in 1924 for Los Angeles Railway. It ran until 1959, when it was sold to a private owner. The owner stored it for years at the (then) Orange Empire Railway Museum, but it left there in 1975 and according to some sources it hit a bridge during transport which caused roof damage. Later, in the 1990s, it was stripped for parts to restore cars in the Muni historic fleet in San Francisco. By the early 2000s it was stored at the old Pacific Electric building and given a coat of paint, but nothing was really done with it. Orange Empire (now Southern California Railway Museum) moved the car to their site in Perris in 2016, I believe just to keep it from being cut up, and then in 2018 it was moved to its current location at the nearby fairgrounds.

It's one of five H-type LARy cars preserved, and one of three H-3 class cars, so it's not particularly significant - especially given that the others are all complete and this one definitely isn't.

Postcard from Colfax

"Lovely weather - wish you were here!" Thanks to Joel Salomon for taking the above photo of Toronto PCC 4472 and to Wesley Paulson for passing this along to me (with Joel's permission to post it). TTC 4472 is a typical 4400-series PCC built for that city by St. Louis in 1949. It was purchased in 1990 by the Market Street Railway Association and moved to Muni property, but at some point they sold it to the private owner who goes by Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway (TVL). It has bounced around a bit; as of about 20 years ago it was stored in a scrapyard in Roseville, but in recent years it has been located in Colfax, California. It's supposedly for sale, if you're in the market for a Toronto PCC.

This is one of just three cars still part of the once-sizable TVL collection of PCC cars. Most of the collection was sold around 2007 to a real estate developer in St. Charles, MO, but that outfit went bust in the 2008 recession and the entire lot of cars was unceremoniously scrapped without warning. Besides 4472, there is the bizarre creation dubbed 102435 that was made by welding together half of Muni 1024 and half of Muni 1035 to create a double-ended PCC; and a second Toronto PCC, 4404. This car was also owned by MSRA but was stored in Oakland in the early 1990s. The trouble is, I can't find any information on this car more recent than 2007, when it was listed for sale. It may be stored on the property in South Lake Tahoe along with car 102435, but does anyone know for certain?

South Shore Combine Scrapped

Many thanks to Dan Hodgson, who reported via Facebook that property cleanup at the Boone & Scenic Valley has continued with the scrapping of South Shore combine 109. This car had been at Boone since the mid-1980s but had never operated there, and together with combine 102 has long been stored in a derelict state. (It should also be pointed out that the only South Shore combine currently preserved in operating condition anywhere is car 106 at Boone.) Dan posted several photos on Facebook, of which a few are presented here for posterity.

Before:

After:

The scrapping of car 109 isn't a huge loss, partly because there are other examples and partly because it was probably inevitable given its poor condition. Car 102 may follow it at some point, though that's not certain right now. Even with that, though, there will be two combines of this series preserved intact (106 at Boone and 107 at East Troy) and another two in "tunneled" but largely presentable condition in Chesterton, Indiana. It's not an awful survival rate for a series of 12 cars.

Kennecott Copper Steeplecab Scrapped

Kennecott Copper 703, an 85-ton articulated-frame steeplecab located at the Boone & Scenic Valley in Iowa, has been scrapped. The above photo was taken, and was among several posted online, this week by Dan Hodgson. This locomotive was built by GE in 1928 and worked its entire career at Kennecott Copper, or KCC, until it was retired in the early 1980s. It was one of four KCC steeplecabs that went to Boone in 1986. I'm not really clear on why Boone acquired them, but I presume it was because they resemble a similarly large steeplecab that once ran on the Fort Dodge Des Moines & Southern (photo). Anyway, two - KCC 408 and 409 - were cut up by B&SV years ago, but 702 and 703 have remained in increasingly derelict condition.

This photo of KCC 702 was also taken this week and posted by Dan Hodgson. The loss of KCC 703 is of only moderate significance. It was one of nine (now eight) surviving KCC steeplecabs and was one of three (now two) survivors of this type, the other two being 702 in Boone and KCC 700, preserved at the Western Railway Museum in markedly better condition - in fact, 700 is operational, which I believe makes it the only KCC electric to have operated in preservation. But 702 and 703 are not the only large industrial steeplecabs in preservation, and the KCC locomotives preserved elsewhere do not seem to be in much danger.

More New York Subway Cars in North Carolina

Craggy Mountain Line, the privately owned museum/tourist line in western North Carolina, announced on its Facebook page today that it has taken delivery of a pair of New York subway cars. R32-type cars 3432 and 3433. The cars, which make up a married pair, were built by Budd in 1964. They're the fifth and sixth R32 cars on the list but the first pair preserved off the New York subway system. They're not the first subway cars from the Big Apple at CML; the body of an R6 from 1934, car 983, resides there too as a display piece.

The CML roster now consists of a seven cars: beside the three New York subway cars, there's a pair of ex-Philadelphia, ex-Chicago "spam cans" and a pair of Asheville streetcar bodies. This strange mixture is entirely stationary, and as far as I know, there are no current plans to electrify.

On a totally different topic, I found out that SMS Rail Lines in New Jersey acquired a sixth Lackawanna MU car back in 2021. I knew about the first five they purchased that year - three from the Stourbridge Line in Pennsylvania and two that had been plinthed for decades next to the New York Central Hudson line at Croton-on-Hudson. But a sixth, car 3567, also made its way to the SMS yard in Bridgeport, NJ. This car, which is a typical 1930 Pullman-built motor car from the Lackawanna suburban electrification that has been de-electrified during its preservation career, has led a varied and unfortunate existence the last couple of decades. It was at the Maine Coast Railroad in the 1990s, after which it made its way to the Turner Island Railroad, which didn't last long. For the last 15 years or so it was stored, in steadily deteriorating condition, on the Southern Railroad of New Jersey at Winslow Junction.

When it arrived at SMS in summer 2021 it presented a sorry appearance, but after a tear-down in their shop it was apparently kicked out. Its appearance as of late 2022 is shown below (photo from here). This doesn't seem like an improvement, though it's hard to fault SMS for wanting to remove that aluminum roof, which is a source of problems for just about all the preserved Lackawanna motor cars. The future of this particular specimen is, at best, uncertain.