In Memoriam - Ed Metka

I just found out that Ed Metka, founder of the Vintage Electric Streetcar Company in Windber, PA, died earlier this month at the age of 86. I never met Ed, but in terms of quantity he was the largest individual collector of electric railway cars in the country. VESCO ended up with roughly 60 cars, mostly PCCs. These included some that were sold in 2000 to help make the Kenosha, Wisconsin, heritage line a reality, and several more stored inside the building in Windber. The rest were kept in a state of benign neglect near that building, and in recent years became infamous as the "trolley graveyard." Despite this dubious honorific, the VESCO collection was quite an achievement of sorts, given its size. Ed sold the collection last year and in the time since, parts have been purchased and removed by various trolley museums to help keep their fleets operating. The cars Ed stored in the building in Windber may yet find new homes; only time will tell. Either way, Ed left a lasting impression on traction preservation. We extend our condolences to his family and friends. (Photo above from here)

Answers and More Questions

A few years ago, in this post, I asked for information on a streetcar that had gone "missing" in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Today, thanks to Bill Wall, who alerted me to this video, I've got one answer - but a few more questions.

The images here are screen grabs from that video. At about the 11:00 mark, the streetcar pictured above shows up. This appears to be car 15 from my previous post, the single-trucker owned by the Negaunee Historical Society and said to have been moved from a site in town out to the Tracy Mine back in 2014. These are the best images I've seen of the car, and show that it appears largely solid but has doors cut into the centers of both ends. It looks a lot like a Brill-design car; one clue is the "barrel" shaped interior posts shown below. Single-truckers of this design (often built by American Car Company) were extremely common on small-town street railway systems in the Midwest. Very few are left, with Grand Forks 102 being a rare surviving example.

The Negaunee Historical Society claims that this car ran in Negaunee on the Marquette County Gas Light & Traction line to Ishpeming. However, having looked into it a bit, I'm dubious. The only information I have on MCGL&T comes from CERA Bulletin 103, and that says that the line "graduated to double-truckers" in 1907, buying two Jewetts and a Niles. That suggests that the line's earlier single-truckers may not have lasted too late, though it's not really clear.

On the other hand, the same book shows images of Brill-design deck-roof single-truckers running in nearby Marquette that match car 15 exactly. Spotting features include seven windows per side plus a narrow window next to each bulkhead; blocked-off left side doors; and, perhaps most unusually, a very odd rub rail arrangement where the rub rail only extends a couple of feet in from each end of the body before ending. Furthermore, American Car Company records show five cars numbered 16-21 built in 1903 for the Marquette City & Presque Isle, the system in Marquette. This doesn't tell me who built car 15, which doesn't show up in any builder order lists I have, but it matches the number series.

As such, I've decided that car 15 in Negaunee is almost certainly from the Marquette & Presque Isle. It's annoying that it doesn't show up in any of my builder order lists; my best guess is that it was bought secondhand or sold to a broker who then sold it to the MC&PI. Perhaps it was built by Stephenson, for which I don't have an order list, though they weren't bought by Brill until 1904. If anyone happens upon a MC&PI roster, please let me know! In the meantime, I've added the car to the PNAERC list here. It's not the only car on the list whose builder is unknown, but I hope to gather more information on this intriguing car as time goes on.