Birney Goes on Display in Bellingham

I just happened upon this article in the Cascadia Daily News, from a couple of months ago, that details the placement of Tacoma Railway & Power 324 on display in Bellingham, Washington. The car is owned - and, now, is located adjacent to - the Helen Loggie Museum of Art in Bellingham, which is a fairly new organization housed in the city's historic Washington Territorial Courthouse building. Information on this car comes from Tom and Vince Mendenhall, who restored its body on behalf of the Loggie Museum as detailed here. The car has been placed under an attractive canopy that affords an unobstructed view from the street. Car 324's status has been updated to "displayed inoperable."

P.S. Anyone know what the significance of the "704" placard on the end of the car might be? It looks a bit like a New York subway car number board, but I'm mystified as to its role on this car.

Postcard from Tampa

Thanks to Bill Hirsch, who has sent along a couple of photos of Tampa Electric 402, the double-truck Birney located in Tampa, Florida.

I say "located" rather than "preserved" because, well, this poor car isn't quite as preserved as it used to be. Twenty years ago, it was a fairly typical streetcar body (photo) with an intact roof and at least some of its doors and windows. Today, not even both of its ends are intact, its roof is all but gone, and other than a coat of paint, its condition has clearly deteriorated in the last five years. Bill also spoke with the car's owner, who plans to further modify it as part of an art installation in the future. So, I haven't quite resigned myself to taking it off the PNAERC list yet, but something tells me it may just be a matter of time. Between the plight of car 402 and this recent event, it's a rough time to be a double-truck Birney.

Down Two Boeings

Word has arrived that the Chicago Transit Authority, which in 2015 set aside eight 2400-series 'L' cars built by Boeing-Vertol for their historic collection, has downsized a bit. Cars 2543 and 2544, shown above back in 2017, are being sent to scrap. This isn't too much of a loss; the CTA still has three pairs of these cars, all repainted in c1978 red/white/blue livery. They've even been slowly backdating 2455-2456 to original, or at least more original, condition, including conductor's positions. There's also a pair preserved at IRM and several pairs evidently still in work service on the CTA. The CTA heritage fleet, which for many years was frozen at only two 1920s 4000-series cars, now stands at 14 cars, including the two 4000s, four 1950s-era 6000s, two 1960s-era 2200s, and six 2400s.

Edison Car Under Restoration

From this post on the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum's Facebook page comes some good news: Lackawanna MU car 2628, shown above, is at the Morristown & Erie's shop complex in New Jersey and is currently being restored. Car 2628 is one of the Lackawanna's 1930 "Edison cars," so called because Thomas Edison ran the ceremonial first train. Many of these motor cars are still around, in various states of preservation, but not a single one has been truly restored to in-service condition. It appears that may be about to change, though understandably enough this won't be an operational restoration. The car's status on the PNAERC list has been changed to reflect the work being done on it.

Three of a Kind

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for alerting me to this post from the Western Railway Museum a few days ago. Their third BART cars has arrived! Following the arrival of an "A2" car in August and a "B2" car in September, they've now acquired "C1" car number 329. This car has led a less eventful existence than the other two, never having been renumbered or rebuilt, and is the only one of the trio to retain its as-built DC motors. It was built by Alstom in 1987 as a flat-end motor car, a way for BART to adopt a fleet more adaptable to changing needs for train lengths when compared with the original fleet, which consisted entirely of blind motors and "end cars" that couldn't easily be run mid-train.

This likely completes BART's presence on the PNAERC roster, at least for a while. I don't believe the system has retained any of its own first-generation cars for historic purposes, and certainly none of the giant 5'6"-gauge cars have gone to any other museums. With this arrival, WRM has a total of 69 cars on the PNAERC list, with 2,088 cars on the list in all.

A Streetcar from the Magnolia State - Updated

Thanks to Bill Wall for alerting me to this article from late August that describes an exciting development. The last (known) surviving Vicksburg, Mississippi, streetcar, which was discovered four years ago as reported right here, has now officially been preserved at a museum. The car body has been restored, as shown above, and moved to The Old Depot Museum, which is the local history museum and happens to be located in the old railroad depot.

Kudos to the folks in Vicksburg who turned this from just another "streetcar body found in a house and then shoved into storage somewhere" into a rather attractive display piece. Unfortunately, I still don't know anything about the car! I haven't managed to dig up any Vicksburg rosters. They apparently numbered their cars by tens, so builder records suggest that cars 75, 105, 115, 125, and 135 were all built by St. Louis Car Company between 1913 and 1916. Cars 145, 155, 165, and 175 were Birneys bought secondhand, and this car definitely isn't a Birney, so my guess is that it's in the 75-135 series. But I don't know what happened to numbers 85 and 95, so I can't even say with confidence that this is a SLCC product.

Nevertheless, even with as little information as I have, the car is certainly preserved and displayed, so I should add it to the PNAERC list. It's been added and is now the only car on the list to hail from the Magnolia State (though this car is preserved in Mississippi, it's from over the border in Memphis). If anyone happens upon a photo, roster, or any other information that might shed some light on the single-truck pre-Birney cars used in Vicksburg, please drop me a line.

And with that, I think I'm down to just four states that aren't represented by cars preserved on the list: Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Don't confuse that with states where cars are preserved; I mean that I don't think there are any cars on the list that ran in those states in regular service. I'd say 46 out of 50 ain't bad. As for states where cars are currently preserved, I think we're at 47/50, missing only Hawaii, New Mexico, and Vermont.

UPDATE: Photos taken in October 2024 by Murphy Zane Jenkins-Henson have been posted on Facebook here, though I'm not sure whether that link will work. I've reproduced a couple of the photos below. They show the Vicksburg car on display under a substantial shelter next to The Old Depot Museum.

SECOND UPDATE: I was able to obtain builder's photos of Vicksburg cars 75, 115, and 135 from Washington University, which holds the surviving St. Louis Car Company records. And (drumroll) ...none of them look anything like the preserved body! They're all eight-window cars, whereas the preserved car is a six-window car. More noticeably, they have doors at all four corners, suggesting they were not delivered as one-man cars. The preserved car may have been rebuilt, but it looks to my eye like it was built new with doors only at two corners. Is it possible that the preserved car was delivered after the city's Birneys, maybe numbered 185 or 195?