The San Diego Heritage Fleet Contracts

Thanks to Chris Baldwin for sending along updates regarding the heritage fleet in San Diego, which is run by the transit agency but goes by the moniker San Diego Vintage Trolley. SDVT has recently scrapped two of the cars in their collection, so their historic fleet now numbers four.

The first car scrapped, shown above, was San Francisco Municipal Railway 1123. It was built by St. Louis in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1728; went to Muni in 1957; and was sold to Tahoe Valley Lines in 1994, where it sat in dead storage in 2005. When San Diego started up their heritage trolley effort in 2005, the first two PCCs they acquired were 1122, which was renumbered 529 (this car was restored and put into service in 2011), and this one. Car 1123 was going to become SDVT 530 (you can see that number over its headlight in the above Peter Ehrlich photo from 2009), but sometime in the early 2010s this plan was shelved and ex-Newark PCC 10 was rebuilt as 530 instead. This car had been stored under a tarp for years.

After SDVT acquired cars 1122 and 1123 in 2005, they picked up Muni 1170 in 2006 (this car was briefly given the number 531, but was then cosmetically restored with the number 539 and given to a nearby museum in 2013). Their next acquisition, shown above in a 2016 photo, was SEPTA PCC 2186, built by St. Louis in 1948. This car went to the Museum of Transportation in Missouri in 1994 and was sold to SDVT in 2009. It was initially given the number 532, then a couple of years later it was reassigned as 531. It was stripped down to a shell in the early 2010s, but this rebuild was never finished; Chris reports that the project was cancelled and the money instead used to refurbish LRV 1001. This car, too, has been scrapped. This leaves only the two operational cars, 529 and 530, and SEPTA 2785, acquired directly from SEPTA in 2010 and supposedly assigned the number 533.

The PNAERC roster has been updated to remove cars 1123/530 and 2186/532/531. I've also changed the operating fleet of two PCCs and an LRV from "operated often" to "operated occasionally." Chris relates that the PCCs, at least, are rarely if ever run these days, so it may be that "stored operable" would be more accurate.

The PNAERC list currently stands at 2,085 cars in total.

The Other Streetcars of Perris

I'm working on more list cleanup, and of the 13 cars recently on the PNAERC list with their condition listed as "unknown," four were located in Perris, California. None were at the Southern California Railway Museum, though.

The first is Los Angeles Transit Lines 1435, the condition of which is a mystery at this point. I've written about the car here, here, and here, but that last update from nearly a year ago had the car being sold at auction. At the time, it was located at the Southern California Fairgrounds, but I don't know whether it's still there or whether it was sold and moved. Any information is appreciated.

And then there are three cars listed under Electric Railway Historical Association ownership. These cars are, or were, LARy 34, LARy 44, and San Diego Electric Railway 201. All were center-entrance cars; the SDER car was built in 1914 by St. Louis, car 44 was built in 1904 by St. Louis as a class B "standard" and rebuilt in 1915 as a class C "Sowbelly, and car 34 had a convoluted history dating to its construction in 1897 by American. It started as Los Angeles Traction 90, then ran for "old" Pacific Electric as their 780 until 1912, when it was sold to LARy and rebuilt as a class A "Maggie" numbered 33. Just two years later, it was rebuilt as a class C "Sowbelly."

These cars were owned by the late Ben Minnich and stored on property adjacent to SCRM starting around 1995-1996. The above aerial photo dates to the early 2010s and comes from Bing maps. You can see the two "Sowbellies" near the upper left corner with TTC 4460 in the lower right corner. The SDER car already seems to be missing.

And this much more recent image is from Google Maps. The TTC PCC is still down in the corner, so it's presumed to still be there, but the LARy cars are gone. I do note, however, that there seems to be a pile of debris where one of them used to sit. I've decided to take all three of these cars off the PNAERC list on the assumption they've collapsed or been scrapped. If anyone has information to the contrary, please let me know.

With the removal of these three cars, there are no longer any cars listed on the PNAERC list under ERHA ownership (the Toronto PCC is listed under separate, private ownership) and the total number of cars on the list now stands at 2,087, of which just 10 have their condition listed as "unknown."

Second Pearl Brewery Locomotive on Display

I happened upon the above photo on Facebook the other day, and it has led to a PNAERC update. The steeplecab shown is Texas Transportation 1, one of two surviving locomotives that for decades switched the historic Pearl Brewery in San Antonio. When the wires came down in 2000, TT 1 spent over two decades in storage, first in an ex-SP yard in San Antonio and then on private property in Elmendorf, Texas. Last year, though, it was repainted and moved back to San Antonio, and sometime in late 2023 or early 2024 it was placed on a short section of track under a nice open-sided roof overhang. It's located next to an entrance to the "Pullman Market," formerly known as Samuels Glass, in an alley behind Karnes Street - and you can even see it here on Google Street View. Isn't technology grand? I've changed TT 1's status from "stored inoperable" to "displayed inoperable."

The locomotive itself was built by Baldwin-Westinghouse in 1917 and was initially sold to the Milwaukee Road, supposedly as a regenerative braking test unit, before being returned to B-W in 1919. It then went to Monongahela West Penn as their 2000 (sister locomotive MWP 3000 is also preserved), which sold it in 1948 to the Kansas City Kaw Valley & Western, where it was 504 (two other ex-KCKV&W steeplecabs still run today on Iowa Traction). Texas Transportation bought it in 1953. The Pearl Brewery locomotive fleet of two has fared pretty well. Although neither locomotive is on live rail, TT 2 - an ex-Texas Electric cab-on-flat - has been displayed since 2006 in similarly attractive fashion just two blocks to the north, also in home territory.

Streetcars on the Move

It's not every day an old streetcar moves from one museum to another. And it's definitely not every day that two streetcars move from one museum to another in totally unrelated moves. But, that day was today!

First up, New Orleans Public Service 966 has ended a 21-year stint on loan from its owner, the Seashore Trolley Museum, to the Lowell Historical Park in Lowell, Massachusetts. Today it was transported back to Maine and unloaded at Seashore. The above photo is pretty impressive: the Silk Road truck carrying 966 threads its way between the Seashore visitor center and Tower C, complete with a ConnCo open car and even a rainbow visible in the background. Car 966 is believed to be operational, so it will be a welcome addition in Kennebunkport, where the regular operating fleet stands at just three cars thanks to motor failures and various other mechanical issues. Until now it was the only car on the PNAERC list in Lowell; the Gomaco-built replica cars are still there, but since they're replicas, they're not on the list. Thanks to Eric Gilman for posting the photo.

A few hundred miles away in western Pennsylvania, another streetcar was "touching down" in a new home. Philadelphia Rapid Transit 2282, a 1906 Brill product, is the oldest double-truck car from that city in existence and the only example of a really "standard" Philly car from before the Nearside era. It's been stored at Electric City Trolley Museum for some time, but they are short on space and needed to pare down their collection a bit. Fortunately, the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum had room, so PTM is the new home for this historic - albeit undoubtedly less-than-pristine - car. It was unloaded in PTM's storage building today. This leaves ECTM with 23 cars on the list, though two of those are stored off-site and not accessioned.

And in unrelated news, an anonymous photographer sent me some pictures of the accidental scrapping of the Waterville Birney described here. I think we all hope that Seashore's future car re-homing efforts will hew more toward the example of 2282 and less toward this.

More List Cleanup

Not every time I take a car off the PNAERC list is it because the car was scrapped. Sometimes, it's because the car has disappeared entirely. Others, it's because something about its condition or prospects has changed so that it no longer qualifies as "preserved." That's the case today, and the reason I've taken a quartet of MBTA subway cars off the list.

MBTA 01469, 01470, 01477, and 01480 are Cambridge-Dorchester line cars built by Pullman-Standard in 1963. They're identical to 01450 and 01455, preserved at Seashore. But unlike that pair, the aforementioned quartet never left the "T." After retirement in 1994, they were put into work service for a time and then stored. In recent years, they've been kept in increasingly derelict condition at Codman Yard.

This is a photo of 01470 taken in 2023. I added these cars to the PNAERC list probably 20+ years ago, when they were in reasonably good shape (possibly still operational). But at this point, it's doubtful that they'll end up preserved. The "T" doesn't retain cars for its own historic fleet, other than the Mattapan PCCs, and Seashore has stopped collecting rapid transit cars; they recently turned down a pair of 1970s Orange Line cars set aside for them, with the result that the type is now extinct. As such, I've removed the four Codman Yard 01400s from the PNAERC list. That leaves the MBTA with a total of 11 cars on the PNAERC list (nine Mattapan PCCs and two cars on display at Boylston) and a grand total of 2,090 cars on the list.

BART Comes to Rio Vista

The Western Railway Museum is growing its collection again, and this time, it's acquired one of the most distinctive and unusual pieces of electric railway equipment in preservation.

Today saw the arrival in Rio Vista of Bay Area Rapid Transit 1164, the first BART car to enter preservation (or, at least, enter private preservation - I'm not certain whether BART has formally set aside any of its own first-generation fleet for historic reasons). Car 1164 is an "A2" car that started life as an "A" car, one of the unmistakable shovel-nosed, single-window giants so closely associated with the BART system. It's a Rohr car that bears some similarity to the 1000-series WMATA subway cars already on the PNAERC list, but of course it's the first piece of equipment on the list that's 5'6" gauge and also the first piece designed for 1000vDC traction power. A 2002 rebuilding (hence the "2" in "A2") saw its original DC motors and chopper control replaced with AC equipment.

This particular car was used as a testing car on the Hayward Test Track for a time, which gives it a unique history. WRM posted on their Facebook page about the move, which is where the above photos came from. They included a shot of the car already on display in the Jensen Car House, where the museum has laid some dual-gauge track, though they used standard-gauge "dollies" to switch the car around. They're also planning to acquire a "B" car and a "C" car in the near future to represent all the major types of first-generation BART rolling stock. Kudos to them for accomplishing a preservation project with, shall we say, some unique challenges!

Whoops

A truly bizarre story has emerged from the Seashore Trolley Museum. They've accidentally scrapped one of their cars.

The car in question, shown above in photos taken this past March, was Waterville Fairfield & Oakland 60. One of about a dozen cars at Seashore hailing from Maine, it was originally built in 1923 by Brill for the Plymouth & Brockton Street Railway in Massachusetts as their car 400. In 1928, it was sold to the WF&O in Maine, where it operated until retirement in 1937. Its body came to Seashore in 1991 as part of the "Last Roundup" carbody collecting frenzy and it's been in storage since then. It was the last WF&O car and the last P&B car in existence, and was a moderately rare example of a double-truck Birney.

So, how do you accidentally scrap a car? Seashore emailed out a statement outlining the chain of events, which I've reproduced below for posterity. They brought in an outside company, evidently a scrapper, with an eye toward having the scrapper cut up Ottawa 825, which is on their "re-homing list." However, after consulting with the scrapper, they decided to put off this job because car 825 wasn't easily accessible to heavy equipment. And yet, museum volunteers evidently didn't get the word that the job had been put off; decided to invite the scrapper to cut up car 825 anyway; and then had the scrappers start on the wrong car. The result was that the scrapper had already started demolishing WF&O 60 by the time anyone realized something was amiss.

The museum is now stripping parts from the body and disposing of what's left. I've removed car 60 from the PNAERC list, leaving Seashore with 189 cars on the list. This particular car had presented a potential conundrum to Seashore; they've been rapidly deaccessing their sizable collection of deteriorated car bodies, of which this was clearly one. On the other hand, this particular car was also a part of the prized collection of Maine cars, making it a candidate to stay in the collection despite its condition. That decision is moot now.

The official statement from Seashore:

Dear Members of Our Valued Community,

I am reaching out to inform you of an unfortunate incident that occurred on Wednesday, July 24, which has affected our museum collection.

Due to the age and deterioration of some of the pieces in our collection, the decision was made by our Board of Trustees to de-accession specific cars that are beyond restoration so they can be offered through our re-homing efforts to other museums and hobbyists. After several months or years of pursuing another home for these items, the Curatorial Committee, authorized by the Board of Trustees, voted to move these cars to the campus scrap list. Our professional staff, along with Seashore volunteers or third-party contractors, would then manage the scrapping process.  We have policies in place for these activities, a series of checks and balances, to control how the cars in our collection are managed, the pace at which we seek to re-home an item, and steps in place for what needs to happen prior to scrapping a car in our collection before this work is completed. 

This year, the museum contracted a company we have used in the past to help us advance our car body scrapping efforts. In April 2024, upon review of the location of one car body in the scope of work, Ottawa 825, museum leadership and the contractor decided that we would not pursue this project with this contractor until other steps were taken by our yard crew to make the car body accessible to scrapped; the car body is currently not accessible to the needed machinery. These steps were communicated in writing by the contractor, and the timeline to pursue removing Ottawa 825 was pushed into fall 2024 to allow the volunteer-led departments involved in this process the time to complete this pre-work.

However, on July 24, without the knowledge of museum leadership, this contractor subcontracted directly with Seashore volunteers to scrap the Ottawa 825 car body. The contractor brought in equipment for another project the contractor was completing on campus and offered the equipment to these individuals to use to complete this work. 

Assuming this contractor had arranged this project with the museum's leadership, the subcontracted volunteers began what they thought was work to help the museum move forward on our scrapping initiatives.  The subcontracted volunteers did not confirm this work with our Executive Director, nor did they confirm the location of Ottawa 825 with our Executive Director, which are two of the steps listed in our scrapping policy. Several minutes into this work, the subcontracted volunteers realized that they had begun scrapping the wrong car body; instead of Ottawa 825, the team was in the process of scrapping Waterville 60.  Museum leadership was informed of the error after significant damage to the car's roof and vestibules had already been done.

The Curatorial Committee asked Restoration Shop staff and volunteers to assess the condition of Waterville 60 the following day; all reported that due to the car body's current location and condition, nothing within the museum's means can be done to safely continue preserving Waterville 60. The Curatorial Committee unanimously recommended to the Board of Trustees to de-accession Waterville 60 for immediate scrapping, and the Board of Trustees held an informational meeting on Friday July 26 and a follow-up email vote in accordance with our bylaws to do so. With the boards affirming vote, our Executive Director is now leading the efforts to remove Waterville 60, working with the contractor and other campus volunteers to come up with a plan for the safe removal of parts from the car body prior to completing the scrapping efforts.

Museum policy states that confirmation of a car’s demolition with leadership must be completed prior to taking any action. While this did not happen, leading to this loss to our collection of Waterville 60 and the added expense of needing to scrap the intended car, the issue has been addressed with those involved.  Reminders of this policy have been issued.  The museum will no longer be working with this contractor to scrap items in our collection or on our property.  We're also reviewing current museum policies for changes that may prevent a repeat of this event.

As valued members of our museum community, we wanted to share these details as you may have heard about the incident and we know you value the preservation of rail history as we all do.  This is a loss for our collection and historic transit preservation. While Waterville 60 was not one of the Maine trolleys listed in the National Register of Historic Places, nor has it ever received high enough priority within our collection to receive indoor storage, the car body is believed to be the last of its kind and is the only double truck Birney car in our collection.

We value the contributions of our volunteers and recognize that this museum’s operations would not be possible without their hard work, knowledge, and generosity with their time. The tremendous growth we have experienced over the past decade is a result of those of us who have worked together as a team to accomplish great things. Working alone or in silos is no longer a fit for our collaborative campus culture. This is a stark reminder that all of us need to work together to continue to move the museum and our collection forward; our Executive Director Katie Orlando and Director of Museum Operations Steve Berg must serve as the main contacts for all work taking place on our campus to prevent incidents like this from occurring again in the future.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

WMATA Additions

For a few years now, it's been suggested that more than just two Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) cars had been set aside for preservation by that system. The first two, from the system's original 1000-series order for cars, I knew about; but the 4000- and 5000-series had also been retired and, supposedly, the first pair from each series had been retained. However, evidence of this that I could find consisted of less-than-dependable sources - mostly random forum posts and Wikipedia. But, that's now changed! I found this WMATA fleet management plan from 2021 online.

Between that document and this 2021 Greenbelt Yard inspection form, which confirms car numbers, I can confidently add four more WMATA cars to the PNAERC list. Cars 4000 and 4001 were built in 1991 by Breda, and are the first cars on the PNAERC list to have been built by that company. As near as I can tell, they never went through a major overhaul like the 1000-series cars did and were the last cars on the system with DC traction motors. They were retired in 2017. Cars 5000 and 5001 were built a decade later, in 2001, and ran for just 17 years before retirement in 2018. These were the first cars built new for WMATA with AC traction motors, and like the 4000-series cars, went until retirement without a heavy overhaul. They're the first cars on the PNAERC list built by Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, better known as CAF, which worked with a local firm called AAI Corporation to built and assemble them. They are now the newest cars on the PNAERC list, beating out NJT 4424 by a full five years.

This brings the WMATA historic fleet on PNAERC to six cars and brings the total size of the list up to 2,094 cars. But wait, there's more! WMATA announced just a couple of months ago that it is retiring its 2000-series cars, which were built in the early 1980s by Breda and overhauled in the early 2000s, and saving a pair. The fleet management plan linked earlier also suggests that the system plans to keep the first two cars of each order, suggesting cars 2000 and 2001 have been - or will be - set aside. Can anyone confirm that these two cars are indeed in the plan and whether or not they've already been put out to pasture at Greenbelt Yard? (By the way, post-retirement photos of any of the WMATA historic cars would be very much appreciated; I haven't found a decent photo of a single one of them since retirement. The photo at the top of this post is a random in-service shot I found online.)