And so it begins: the scrapping has started in Windber, following the sale of the property and at least two or three parts-gathering expeditions by various trolley museums. Sources have confirmed that seven of the eight Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCCs have been scrapped, in part because they were blocking access to the barn, which contains a railroad business car that has been sold to the Everett Railroad. At last check, the only Shaker Heights PCC on the property (albeit sans trucks) was car 73. The other seven - ex-Twin City cars 56 and 58 and "native" Shaker Pullman cars 77, 87, 89, 91, and 93 - have all been cut up. They've been removed from the PNAERC list along with Toronto PCC 4524, which was never located on-site in Windber. At one point it was stored in a small town in Ontario, but I've lost track of it over the years and I strongly suspect it has been scrapped.
Of course, this is just the beginning - there are another 50 (yes, fifty!) cars in Windber, and rumors suggest that only a handful are likely to find new homes. Stay tuned for more news.
As a final stick in the eye to any Shaker Heights PCC fans out there, word has reached me that a Shaker Heights car in totally unrelated circumstances has also been scrapped. Shaker car 47, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1773, was cut up in Jasper, Arkansas, about a year ago following the death of the car's owner in 2020. This car had gone to Arkansas in 1987 as part of a trade deal that saw DC Transit 1540 - formerly located in Jasper - go to the National Capital Trolley Museum in Maryland.
Remarkably enough, Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCCs - long thought of as one of the more over-collected types - are quickly becoming an endangered species. Following the scrapping of the eight cars listed here, there are only 10 SHRT PCC cars left (plus a handful of ex-Toronto 4600-series cars acquired by GCRTA in the late 1970s). And I'd guess that within a few years, those 10 cars may be whittled down to five or six.
Here's a final photo gallery of the cars recently cut up. Who needs ipecac?
Car 47 in Arkansas in 2018
As a point of trivia, before the nine cars listed above were removed today, the PNAERC list stood at a total of 2,107 cars. I suspect it will never again reach that figure.
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