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Wesley Paulson is now the official research arm of PNAERC; he keeps digging, finding more information, and solving more mysteries!

First for today, Wesley has confirmed that Pennsylvania Railroad MP54 450 is, in fact, still in existence and in storage at the Wilmington & Western. It's been out of use since the 1990s and is in rough shape, but it's still very much there. So, after recently being removed, it's now back.

A second car that's back on the list is pictured above in a 2009 photo. This is Bellingham Birney 219, confirmed to be in existence by Olin Anderson. The car is listed along with the Historic Railway Restoration collection, but only because it's physically located there - it's privately owned, I believe by someone from Acme, WA, which is where the above photo was taken. This car had been on the PNAERC list until recently, then was taken off, and now is back on. At least until more information turns up...

And finally, Wesley found evidence that Alabama Power Company 103, a 1922 Cincinnati-built Birney that ran in Anniston, has been scrapped. It and one other car - a mystery Southern-built APC single-trucker that was removed from the list last year - were located on private property in Gadsden, Alabama. But the owner sold the property, and the streetcar bodies with it, and it sounds like the new owner has demolished the two cars (which were, to be sure, in rough shape). Car 103 has been taken off the list, reducing the total number of electric cars preserved in Alabama to four, one of which is currently up for auction.

Many thanks to Wesley for all this information!

That's a Lot of Subway Cars

I received an email last week from Edrick Ang, who pointed out that there were a number of subway cars preserved on the New York City subway system that are not on the PNAERC list. This isn't a shock; for a while I've been meaning to comb through the vast nycsubway.org site and try to identify cars that have entered preservation in the last several years that were never added to my roster. Fortunately, Edrick was ahead of me on this and sent along a list. As such, I've now added a net total of 10 subway cars to the list - not quite as many cars as have been removed recently, but still quite a few.

First, NYCTA 3360 and 3361 comprise a R32-type stainless steel married pair built by Budd in 1964 (2022 photo above from here). These cars were part of the last hurrah at the retirement of this type about two years ago, and at that time this pair was backdated to more-or-less original appearance, as you can see. This included the clever device of affixing vinyl stickers over the end door to replicate the original roll signs these cars had when new, which are long gone. This pair is now considered part of the NYCTA historic fleet.

Next up are NYCTA 4280 and 4281, which comprise a married pair of "slant" R40-type cars built by St. Louis Car Company in 1968 (2015 photo above from here). These things are pretty homely, but they're certainly distinctive and I believe they're the last of this type. They were taken out of service in 2009.

Then there's a mismatched pair: NYCTA 4460, which is a straight-end R40A (also known as an R40M) built by St. Louis in 1969, is paired with car 4665, a very similar-looking R42 built very shortly thereafter, likely the same year. Both of these cars had their original mates damaged or destroyed in the Williamsburg Bridge wreck of 1995, so following that they were mated with each other. Car 4665 is shown above in a 2021 photo from here, complete with its as-delivered blue stripe restored to the car end.

The last "modern" car is NYCTA 5240, an R44-type cab car built by St. Louis in 1972. These R40's were delivered in four-car sets with two blind motors and two single-end motors, so this is the car from one end of one of those sets. A number of R44's are still in service on Staten Island, but this is one of the ones that was used on the main subway network and it was retired and put in the New York Transit Museum around 2013. The R44 order is a bit notorious in that it was the last production order built by St. Louis Car; there were so many issues with these cars that SLCC, which by 1972 relied almost exclusively on New York subway car orders to stay in business, went under soon after the order was completed.

There are also three R33-WF "World's Fair" cars built by St. Louis Car Company in 1963 for the IRT division of the subway system. A lot of these cars seem to have just sort of hung around after the "Redbird" fleet was retired back in 2003, and as far as I can tell, 9308 was one of those that was just "around" for a while. Then, in 2019, it was painted in as-delivered colors as shown above (photo from here) and it's now quite obviously a part of the historic fleet.

The second R33-WF is identical car 9310, shown above in a 2018 photo from here. This is another R33 that seems to have just kind of hung around, but it has stayed in its end-of-service "Redbird" colors, albeit with its number plates moved down to their original height for whatever reason.

The final R33-WF is 9343, shown here in a photo from here taken in 2011. I can't find any recent photos of this car, but supposedly it is indeed still around and is stored with the historic fleet at 207th Street Yard. 

And that brings us to surely the weirdest addition: the Money Train car. Yes, you read that right. When Columbia Pictures was filming the movie Money Train in 1995, they purchased a retired R21 subway car and heavily modified it to represent some sort of revenue collection car (I'm not sure - I've never seen the movie). After filming ended, they donated the thing - fancifully numbered 51050 for the movie - to the New York Transit Museum. In recent years, it has been sitting in dead storage at Coney Island Yard. The above 2014 photo is from here; it looks like the car retains its electrical equipment but I'm not sure. I'm a bit dubious about exactly how historic this thing is, but I can see the argument that it qualifies for the list. Although it's been modified, it's been modified as another (albeit made-up) type of subway car, not as a diner or a house.

Now, with all those additions, there's also one removal: NYCTA 9075, an R33-ML (Main Line) car built by St. Louis in 1963 as part of a married-pair set. This car sat on the front lawn of Queens Borough Hall from 2005 until 2022, but as described here, it was then auctioned off. When it was removed (the striking photo above was taken by Bill Wall), it was carted off to places unknown. Wesley Paulson has now supplied the answer: the car found a buyer looking to place it in their garden, and while it awaits shipment to this person, it's been in storage. Regardless, it sounds like it may qualify for my non-preserved list (if I end up figuring out where it ends up) but not for PNAERC. So, I've removed it.

With all these changes, I now have a total of 38 cars listed under the New York Transit Museum, 24 cars listed under NYCTA ownership, and 16 listed under Railway Preservation Corporation but effectively overseen by NYCTA. That comes to 78 cars preserved on the New York City subway system! That's more than all but the three largest museums - only Seashore, IRM, and Branford have more cars on the PNAERC list.

More Removals

Thanks again to Wesley Paulson, who has reached out to more people to dig up answers to questions about cars on the list! The result, for today, is two more removals.

The first is Groton & Stonington 106, a double-truck wedge plow built by Taunton in 1906 that's shown above in a photo I took back in 2007. Thanks to Richmond Bates of the Seashore Trolley Museum for confirming that car 106 - or what was left of it - is no longer there, and hasn't been around for some time. The car is presumed scrapped and has been taken off the PNAERC list. In theory, this was an historic piece - one of only three Taunton snow plows preserved and the only double-trucker (now only two Taunton plows remain, both double-truck Brooklyn cars at Branford). In practice, though, there obviously wasn't much left of the car.

EDIT: Many thanks to Paul Schneble, who dug up more information on this history of G&S 106. It turns out that it wasn't built by Taunton: it was built in the company shops by Marquardt Brothers of Groton, CT, in 1908 as express car 1, and apparently became plow 106 later. Seashore initially acquired the car as a representative Taunton product, but when its actual origins were discovered, the primary reason for keeping it evaporated and the car was later disposed of.

The other removal is the car shown above, Philadelphia PCC 2131, which David Lippincott says was sold by the Pikes Peak Historical Street Railway to a rancher in Oklahoma a few years back. The image above dates to 2018 and is from an eBay listing - read more here - so now we know what ended up happening to the car. I've taken it off the PNAERC list, but who knows, maybe it will show up on the non-preserved electric cars list at some point, if I find out where it ended up. In the meantime, PPHSR has several other Philadelphia PCCs in better shape in storage at their site.

Several Mysteries Solved

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson and the others who have sent information on the "situation unknown" cars in the list I posted a couple of days ago. I've been able to answer a few of these questions with the information submitted.

First, it's confirmed that Newport & Providence 9, the body of a double-truck open car built by Laconia in 1904, was demolished by the Seashore Trolley Museum in November 2023. The body - what there was of it - was already in a state of partial collapse, so this was pretty much inevitable. The car has been removed from the list. The above view from here dates to 2019; the below image is a still from a video of the car being dismantled. Thanks to Jack D for confirmation of this.

The second car removed from the PNAERC list is TTC subway cab-on-flat work car RT28, shown below in a photo from 2007 from here. This car and identical car RT29 were preserved at Halton County, which still has RT29 in its collection to represent the type. Thanks to Gord McOuat for confirming that RT28 was scrapped, something like a decade ago as it turns out.

Gord also sent confirm that all three Canadian Railway Museum/Exporail cars - Montreal Tramways 1953, Quebec Railway Light & Power 105, and Toronto TP10 - are very much in existence and are stored indoors in an off-limits building at CRM. Gord even sent a sheet of technical information on TP10 that allowed me to flesh out its entry.

More List Clean-up

Every so often, I try and go through and double-check some of the more questionable cars on the PNAERC list. For the most part, these are cars that definitely existed and were preserved at one point, but I can't find any information to corroborate their continued existence. This isn't the first time I've gone through and removed cars whose existence is suspect enough that I no longer think they belong on the PNAERC list.

This time, I've pulled six cars off the list. Four are Lackawanna MU trailers, cars 2310, 2313, 2316, and 2341. All four were formerly on the list as part of the sizable Reading Blue Mountain & Northern/Reading & Northern fleet of excursion cars - the four cars were even listed as having been renumbered as RBM&N 314, 313, 312, and 311 respectively - but during my recent photo project I wasn't able to find any trace of them online. I'm not certain that they've been scrapped, but I can't find any evidence that they're still around, and for a highly visible railroad like the R&N that strikes me as peculiar. For the time being, they're off the list.

There's also Pennsylvania Railroad 450, an MP54 that last I knew was owned by the Wilmington & Western. According to my notes it had been damaged by arsonists, and I can't find any recent evidence of this car either, so it's possible that it's been scrapped. I've removed it from the list until I can find definite information one way or another. EDIT: This car is still around and is back on the list! 

And the final car is a Mobile Light & Railroad single-trucker from Mobile, Alabama. About 20 years ago, this car was saved by the Museum of Mobile and put into storage at the Alabama State Docks. Its number was unknown, but it was a 120-series Birney built by St. Louis in 1919. Anyway, I can't find any evidence that it still exists. This one is a bit more likely to still be there - it wouldn't be the first car that a historical society has squirreled away and largely forgotten about - but as little information as I have on it to begin with, I'm not confident that it's still there at the docks. Unless someone can provide information to the contrary, it's off the list. EDIT: Wesley Paulson discovered that the Museum of Mobile deaccessed the car in 2009 and gave it to the city, which at the time put it in a municipal lot somewhere. The museum hasn't heard anything about the car lately and it's probably a safe bet that the car has been scrapped.

Interested in helping? Click here for a list of the cars whose current status is entirely unknown to me. Many of these are certainly in existence - I don't have any doubt that QRL&P 105 is still around, for example - I just don't know what their conditions are. Current information on any of these cars - or, for that matter, on the cars listed above that have been removed from the list - would be very helpful.

EDIT: The status of several of the cars at the link has been determined - click here.

"Almond Joy" Going to Trolley Museum of New York

Congratulations to the Trolley Museum of New York, which announced on its Facebook page that it has acquired SEPTA 618 from Seashore. Car 618 is one of two iconic "Almond Joy" cars from the Market-Frankford Elevated in Philadelphia that have made it into preservation. It was built by Budd in 1960, one of a subset of single-unit cars in an order mostly made up of married pairs.

In the early 1990s, several "Almond Joy" cars were transferred to the ex-Red Arrow line to Norristown. The Norristown line was having trouble maintaining service levels with their increasingly antiquated fleet of native Strafford and Bullet cars, so a few "Almond Joys" were transferred to provide interim service (several ex-CTA 6000s were also acquired at about the same time for the same reason). Since these cars were originally 5'2.5" gauge, the transferred cars were put on trucks salvaged from PATH MP51-series "K-cars" that were being scrapped at the time.

Car 618 wasn't one of the cars that went to the Norristown line, but when it was retired from service on the Market-Frankford and went to Seashore in 2002, a pair of the K-car trucks went with it. They'd been set aside by Bob Hughes in 1996 when the "Almond Joy" cars were removed from Norristown line service. (Thanks to Mark Wolodarsky for the corrected information! Mark also sent along a link to a GoFundMe where you can donate toward the preservation of car 618.)

Car 618 has remained on a truck trailer for the intervening two decades, though I have no idea whether it's the same truck trailer on which it arrived. The photo above was taken by yours truly in 2016, and interior photos posted by TMNY show that the car's interior has remained in good condition. Car 618 is well suited to TMNY's needs: with its K-car trucks, it can be towed on the museum's line, and its stainless steel construction lends it to outdoor storage without suffering much from the weather. The distinctive rooftop humps that give this type the "Almond Joy" nickname preclude the installation of trolley poles, also making it a good fit for TMNY, which doesn't have overhead.

I haven't updated the car's owner - I'll do that when it arrives in Kingston - but the "for sale" note has been removed from its PNAERC listing. This is the third car recently deaccessed by Seashore to find a new home, following MBTA 3283 (now in Shelburne Falls) and the "Berkshire Hills" (due to move to Shelburne Falls in 2024).

Modern MUs at Exporail

Many thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski, who pointed out that I had missed a pair of electric cars that entered preservation this past October: Exo 400 and Exo 485. They have now been added to the list.

The cars are shown above, in a photo from this page, being delivered to the Canadian Railway Museum (aka Exporail) in Delson-Ste. Constant, PQ, this fall. The cars are MR-90 type mainline commuter cars set up in good old motor-trailer fashion, with car 400 representing the fleet of four-motor cars while 485 is a control trailer. These MR-90 cars were built by Bombardier in 1994-1995 and replaced the old GE boxcabs and 1950s MU cars, many of which are now in preservation. But Montreal is completely rebuilding the Deux-Montagnes line, so this fleet was retired en masse in late 2020.

The entire fleet of 58 of these cars was scrapped except for these two, so they're unique and moderately significant in that respect. I'd also point out that their most recent operator, Exo, probably represents the shortest railway name on the PNAERC list. I have almost no mechanical information on these cars - they ran on 25kV AC and apparently used Siemens AC traction motors, but that's all I've got. If anyone can contribute control, motor, truck, brake, or air compressor information, I'd be very much obliged.

Equipment Moving Home

Equipment is moving! The higher-profile equipment move involved New York Central 100, the first S-motor, and New York Central 278, the last T-motor. These two arrived at their new home in Danbury, Connecticut, yesterday (January 2nd) and were unloaded today. The photos above and below come from the Railfan & Railroad Facebook page.

The T-motor was placed back on its trucks, but the S-motor was deposited on a flatcar. Photos suggest that the S-motor took some serious damage to both its body and underframe while being extracted from its longtime home in Glenmont, New York, so that may have something to do with it. It looks like the T-motor mercifully fared better.

And at the other end of the country, the Arizona Street Railway Museum / Phoenix Trolley Museum has managed to extract two of their Phoenix Street Railway city cars, PSR 504 and PSR 116, from a building on the south side of downtown Phoenix. The two cars had been stored there since the museum was evicted from its longtime home at Deck Park at the end of 2017, but they're now at the museum's new home along Grand Avenue northwest of downtown. The above photo is from the museum's Facebook page and shows (L-R) car 504, car 116, and car 509, which was rescued in 2020 and still more house than streetcar. The last time three Phoenix city cars were seen together was probably 1948. All of the equipment in this post - NYC 100 and 278, and the three Phoenix cars - have had any "stored off-site" notations removed.

Photos Needed

We're always looking for updated photos of equipment on the PNAERC list, or at least updated photos of equipment that looks different than it used to (for better or, in some cases, for worse). But more than anything, we're on the lookout for cars with no photographic coverage at all.

You can help! Do you have photos of any of the below cars taken within the last decade or two? Please submit them so that we can add them to the PNAERC list and make it more complete. Thank you!

Boone & Scenic Valley - Metra 1551

Brooks Preservation Society - DL&W 3236

Canada Science & Technology Museum - Toronto Ry 64

Canadian Railway Museum - QRL&P 105

Denver Rail Heritage Society - DT 83

Edmonton Radial Railway Society - ERR 31, SMR 35, ERR 38, SMR 54, Calgary 60, Sask 62, ERR 73, LSR 202, TTC 4349

Fort Smith Trolley Museum - FSL&T 10, CT 305

Gomaco - basically every PCC in storage in Ida Grove, Iowa

Halton County Radial Railway - TTC 4053

La Crosse County Historical Society - MVPS 12

Middletown & Hummelstown - DL&W 4307

McKinney Avenue Transit Authority - DR&T 183, DR&T 189, DR&T 323

Museum of the American Railroad - Metra 1548, 1585, 1608, 1652, 1661

National Museum of Transportation - UR 165, SLPS 850

New York City Transit Authority - NYCTA 3341, NYCTA 4460, NYCTA 5001

Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society - Fresno 74

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum - DL&W 3583 (aka SD&A 251)

Port Authority of Cleveland - PRR 2

San Diego Electric Railway Association - SDER 128

San Francisco Municipal Railway - SFMR 1115, SFMR 1130

Seashore Trolley Museum - MBTA 3338

South Shore Line Museum Project - CSS&SB 351

Southern California Railway Museum - LARy 807, LARy 836, LARy 1003, LARy 9007

Travel Town - LARY 59

United Railroad Historical Society - PRR 413, PRR 453, DLW 2406, DLW 3541

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority - WMATA 1000, 1001, 4000, 4001, 5000, and 5001

Western Railway Museum - Stockton 52, Key 186, PG&E 41

Wilmington & Western - PRR 450

Note 1: I left private owners off this list; I also left off the collection in Windber, since it's going away soon anyway!

Note 2: It is distinctly possible that some of the cars listed here have been scrapped. If you have any information regarding cars listed here that no longer exist, please drop me a line!