A Visit to Middletown

Many thanks to Richard Schauer, who was in Middletown visiting the Middletown & Hummelstown this past week and sent along roster shots he snapped of almost the entire traction collection. The M&H has been in a period of transition following the death of owner Wendell Dillinger last year, but it seems that plans for at least a few pieces in the collection are starting to be established.

Let's start with the core of the traction collection, the cars stored inside the barn.

The first two photos show Red Arrow 83, a 1932 Brill suburban car. These "80-series" cars were generally known as Master Units but used the newer body style Brill adopted around this time; this look was also closer to what the Indianapolis Master Units used. Car 83 arrived at the M&H numbered 86; apparently, the M&H bought car 86 but it turned out that 83 was in better shape, so they just swapped numbers! This car is apparently under restoration; the railroad hopes to fix it up and use it on slow days instead of the diesel-hauled passenger train. Its condition has been updated.

Next is South Brooklyn Railway 9425, an open-platform freight motor built in 1903 just a quarter mile away at the Middletown Car Company. This car was acquired, due to its local connection of course, in 1992 from Branford.

The next two photos show Kansas City Public Service 2, a 1948 product of GE that is possibly the last "interurban-type" steeplecab ever built. It later went to the Hutchinson & Northern before being bought by Wendell, who had it stored at the Iowa Terminal for a number of years. This locomotive looks significantly better than the last time I saw it, and has been mostly stripped and primed.

York Railways 162, shown here, is the identical sister to York Railways 163, which was beautifully restored from roughly similar condition by the Rockhill Trolley Museum. These two cars comprise two-thirds of the extant York Railways cars. Car 162 is a body, but surprisingly little rust or significant body rot is evident in these photos. The car was built by Brill in 1924; after building these cars and a handful of other orders, including some cars for Zanesville, Ohio, Brill was sued by the Cincinnati Car Company and compelled to stop building curve-side cars.

This is Brooklyn Rapid Transit 4550, one of three semi-convertibles of this general type in existence. It was built by Laconia in 1906 in the same order as car 4573 at Branford, but this car is incomplete and suffered from years of outdoor storage before being cosmetically fixed up. This car is the second-most-recent addition to the M&H traction collection, having arrived in 2000 after a two-decade stint at Station Square in Pittsburgh.

And the most recent addition to the M&H traction fleet is Lewistown & Reedsville 23, an extremely historic center-entrance interurban car body built by Brill in 1914. I believe this is the last surviving interurban car from the state of New Jersey, though it only ran in the Garden State for a year or so before its original owner sold it to the L&R. As for that line, it has the distinction of being the second-closest electric railway to the present-day Rockhill Trolley Museum. Only the modest streetcar system in Huntingdon, PA, was closer.

And then there are two electric cars that aren't on the PNAERC list because they're not from North America. These are both Rio de Janeiro open cars imported in the 1960s. The top one is an unrestored double-truck car whose number I don't have handy; the lower one, 441, is a single-truck car that has been kept in operational condition for at least the last five decades. For years this car ran regularly at the RELIC Trolley Museum (aka the Railway Equipment Leasing & Investment Corporation) until Wendell moved it out to the M&H. It has run there a number of times using a towed generator. I believe this was one of just two single-truckers that arrived as part of the big Rio open car shipment; the other one was destroyed in a factory fire in Allentown, PA, not many years after arriving in the States.

Now that we've toured the barn, let's head outside!

This is the second 80-series Red Arrow car at the M&H, car 77. Richard was told that this car is to be scrapped for parts to keep other cars of this type in museums operational. This series has fared well in preservation; including car 83, there are five others besides this one in museums, two of which have been fully restored and see regular use.

This is SEPTA 2095, a standard 1948 PCC from Philadelphia.

Next to it is SEPTA 2725, another typical Philadelphia PCC, this one built in 1947.

And further down on the same track is SEPTA 2104, built as part of the same order as 2095. The current plan, evidently, is to scrap one of these three cars and retain one or both of the other two for display. Which car will draw the short straw wasn't clear, and may not have been decided yet.

The other piece of Philadelphia street railway equipment on site is SEPTA C121, shown here, a big double-truck snow sweeper built by Brill in 1923. Not counting a couple of derelicts and an example that has been heavily modified, there are six sweepers of this type in preservation, two of which operate. I'm not really clear on this car's ownership history; according to my notes, it was bought by the M&H straight from SEPTA, but the timing seems a bit odd. Any information is appreciated.

SEPTA 476 is half of a married-pair set of "spam cans" built by St. Louis in 1951 for the Chicago Transit Authority. This car was originally CTA 6069 and it was sold in 1987 to SEPTA for use on the Norristown line, which was experiencing a severe car shortage due to accidents and equipment failures.

On the left is the mate to 476, SEPTA 477. This car was built as, surprise surprise, CTA 4070. To the right is another CTA alumnus, work motor S371. These two undoubtedly encountered each other many times between the 1950s and 1970s on the 'L' in Chicago.

Car S371 was built by Cincinnati in 1924 as 4397. It was rebuilt as a work motor in 1972, and in 1979 it was retired and sold to the Buckingham Valley Trolley Association, probably as a parts source. They sold it to the M&H around 1985. This car is to be scrapped in the near future.

The M&H is also home to a second CTA work motor, car S372, shown here. This car was built by Cincinnati as 4399, but the rest of its history is identical to S371. Like its compatriot, this car is to be scrapped in the near future; in fact, that work may be underway as I write this. Remarkably, for as many 4000-series CTA 'L' cars converted to S-series work motors as were originally saved, these two comprise fully half the extant examples. Once they're gone, only S373 at IRM and S374 at Northern Ohio - neither accessioned and both in poor condition - will remain of the 4000 work motor fleet.

While we're on the topic of cars to be scrapped imminently, this is Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority 3323, a double-ended PCC built by Pullman-Standard in 1945. It was originally Dallas Railway & Terminal 605 and was sold to Boston in 1958. It was stored at Branford from retirement in 1980 until 1992, when it came to the M&H as part of the same deal that saw the South Brooklyn freight motor transferred. This car is clearly in bad shape and was designated for disposal more than five years ago, so it's been on borrowed time for a while. The world's supply of ex-Dallas PCCs has been shrinking, and once this car and a similarly rough car in Windber are gone, the only one of the type located outside of Kennebunkport will be a single example at Warehouse Point.

Finally, there's the M&H fleet of high-roof Lackawanna MU trailers. Please contain your excitement.

M&H 343 is ex-Lackawanna 3343, the lace curtain car.

M&H 366 is ex-Lackawanna 4366.

M&H 302 is ex-Lackawanna 4302.

M&H 352 is ex-Lackawanna 4352.

And the cab car (I'm not sure whether it's the only functioning cab car and/or the only one fitted with ditch lights), M&H 329, is ex-Lackawanna 3329. What push-pull operation isn't enhanced by a plastic lobster to ride the head end of the shove?

Denver Peter Witt Saved

It's getting less common for the big trolley museums to add car bodies "found in the wild" to their collections, but smaller museums and individual collectors are picking up the slack. Earlier this week, an individual in Cheyenne, Wyoming, who operates a contract restoration business under the name High Plains Railroad Preservation, acquired and moved Denver Tramways 842. The car, shown above en route to its new home, is a single-ended Peter Witt built in the DT shops in 1924. As far as I can tell, after it was retired at the end of the streetcar era in Denver, it was made into a cabin near Fort Collins, Colorado. There it sat until this week. It's now the most modern of the nine streetcars from Denver on the PNAERC list, even though its construction appears to be entirely of wood with just steel sheathing - not exactly cutting-edge for 1924! It's clearly in rough shape, but HPRP has recently completed a stunning cosmetic restoration of Denver Tramways .04 - owned by the City of Arvada, but for the moment listed on PNAERC under HPRP because that's its physical location - so a bright future for car 842 isn't particularly unlikely. The PNAERC list now stands at a total of 2,087 cars.