News has come via Facebook (no log-in required, just "X" out of the pop-up) from the Roanoke Chapter NRHS that they have acquired Roanoke Railway & Electric 51 from the Seashore Trolley Museum. The car is shown above in an image from the announcement post.
Car 51 was built by Brill in 1929 as Virginia Electric Power 115 and originally it ran in Lynchburg. In 1937, it was sold to RR&E, where it operated for 10 years until it was retired. It was later a diner in Callaghan, Virginia, and was acquired in late 1991 or early 1992 by Seashore as part of the museum's "last round-up" body collecting spree. The car is in rough shape; the photos posted by the NRHS group indicate that its window posts were cut away on one side and it's got structural problems with the roof. It is, however, an undeniably historic car. The "Master Unit" wasn't tremendously successful, with only a handful of cities ordering them, but it was significant insofar as it sought to update streetcar design with the latest automotive trends. It was also an attempt to create an industry-standard car design.
Only four true "rubber stamp" Master Units survive today. Three are from Yakima, including two in complete condition and one that was abandoned in a forest for decades and had a tree fall on it; and then there's Roanoke 51. The Roanoke car is older than the Yakima cars and was built by Brill in Philadelphia, whereas the Yakima cars were built by American in St. Louis. The "true" Master Units are outnumbered in preservation by later, "modernized Master Unit" Brill cars built for Red Arrow and other systems.
Car 51 is the second car in Kennebunkport, after the "Berkshire Hills," awaiting transportation to a new home. I haven't updated car 51's ownership on PNAERC yet; I'll wait until the car has actually moved home to Virginia to do that. But hopefully this marks a new, positive chapter in the car's history.
I was on a “chicken cooping” trip with the late Ben Minnich in the Summer of 1992 and we inspected this car for eventual acquisition.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! Car 51 supposedly went to Seashore in late 1991/early 1992, but it’s possible that information is off. There’s also a second body from this series that was reputed to have survived somewhere in Virginia at least into recent decades, if not to the present day.
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