"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).