The Auto-Railer - UPDATED

It's rare for me to even mention anything with an internal combustion engine in relationship with PNAERC, but on occasion, something pops up that's cool enough that even I can't manage to find it uninteresting. And so, courtesy of some timely photos and information from our friend Bill Wall, I present the Evans Auto-Railer.

Back in the 1930s, there was a small market for rail buses, with many of the examples built going to traction lines to either replace or feed into electric railway operations (see the Grafton rail bus and the slightly later Houston-North Shore rail bus, both preserved at the National Museum of Transportation). Around 1935, a company called Evans started building modern, streamlined rail buses patterned after the city buses of the day. These weren't normal rail buses, though, because they had both rubber tires and railroad wheels - think Hy-Railer - and could operate both on and off the tracks. Evans called them Auto-Railers, and only one has survived to the present day.

Pictured here, it has just been acquired by the National Capital Trolley Museum. That's a good home for it because it came from the Arlington & Fairfax in Virginia, an electric line that had just taken down its wires. It was built in 1936 and only ran on the A&F until 1939, which is when that line was abandoned. This example was sold to the Arcade & Attica in western New York, where it resided until it went to Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire in the late 1950s. It has been there ever since. Other examples went to interurban lines including the Washington & Old Dominion and the Chicago South Shore & South Bend.*

So, congratulations to NCTM on saving this quite distinctive piece of history. The Auto-Railer wasn't very successful; I think the A&F, with its 13 examples, was by far the largest operator. These can't have been terribly popular with riders accustomed to large, heavy streetcars. Incredibly, the seating capacity appears to have been 27 people, which sounds horrifying given that the thing doesn't appear that much larger than a Chevy Suburban.

*Intriguingly, although historic records claim that A&F 109 went to the South Shore, that number is clearly evident on the example shown here that's going to NCTM. So, which Auto-Railer went to the South Shore?

UPDATE: Bill Wall kindly provided an additional photo of the front of the Auto-Railer that clearly shows the number, even though most of the paint has worn away: 109. The number is located over the front headlight in the same location and typeface used by the Arlington & Fairfax, so I would presume that this was, indeed, A&F 109. 

This was definitely not the Auto-Railer that ended up on the South Shore. Bill reports that the example now at NCTM has a complete interior and ceiling, plus it clearly lacks add-ons the CSS&SB one acquired such as square headlight surrounds and some rooftop accoutrements. Ideally, it would be nice to find South Shore Line records showing the previous fleet number of the Auto-Railer they received and rebuilt as an overhead line truck; barring that, it may be difficult to figure out what that thing's A&F number had been, since it's now known that it wasn't A&F 109.

UPDATE #2: More information from Bill Wall comes in the form of this 1962 photo of Auto-Railer 109, purportedly taken at the White Mountain Central (Clark's Trading Post, I presume) and labeled "Grasse River." The photo is from this page.

This thing was clearly in rough shape even 60 years ago! The Grasse River Railroad was an unusual short line railroad in upstate New York which was also home to the distinctive wooden doodlebug now preserved in operational condition at the Strasburg Railroad. This thing appears to have gone from the A&F to the GRR, possibly via the Arcade & Attica. How much use it saw, if any, on the GRR is unknown. Note that when this photo was taken, the South Shore was still using their Auto-Railer as a line car!

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

The Western Railway Museum is acquiring three Bay Area Rapid Transit cars from the system's just-retired "legacy" fleet, and the second of these three cars arrived yesterday. BART 1834 has a pretty interesting history. It's a "B2" class car, and the "B" indicates that it's a blind motor (aka, no cab) while the "2" indicates that it was rebuilt around 2000 with IGBT inverter control and AC motors. However, that was its second rebuilding - when it was new, it was "A" car 120 and was the same type as BART 1164 (then numbered 164), already preserved at WRM. It was rebuilt without its cab sometime around 1980, I think. The car's most unique claim to fame, though, is that in September 1972, it was ridden by President Richard Nixon. So, there you go.

The above photo of car 1834 leaving San Francisco comes from a post on WRM's Facebook page, and it appears that the car has now been placed on display indoors at the museum, coupled to car 1164. It's been added to the PNAERC list but I'm still looking for more information, primarily rebuild dates - both for when it went from an A car to a B car and for when it went from a B to a B2 car.

I believe car 1834 is only the second blind motor on the PNAERC list, after PATH 143, and the first to be preserved with a matching cab car. This acquisition brings the size of WRM's fleet on PNAERC to 68 cars (just six shy of SCRM!) and brings the overall PNARC list to 2,086 cars.

Saskatoon Sweeper Update

Many thanks to Cliff Humphrey of the Edmonton Radial Railway Society, who has sent along the following photo and update of restoration work on Saskatoon Municipal Railway 200:

This 1906 Ottawa Car Company sweeper is now operable and can be used to sweep snow. Hopefully, some 'testing' will be done this winter! The cable-lifted work platform and wing plow assemblies are still being worked on, so the car is not technically complete yet. Sask 200 has already been driven around Fort Edmonton in a few tests and display runs; it will officially debut alongside Regina 42 in 2025. The big item on this car is the brushes; the chain-driven mechanism was a difficult system to rebuild, especially using a cast steel chain of uncertain origin (we know it came from 200, but whether it's original from 1906 or a later component is unclear). The brush drive system took a lot of staged testing to ensure it was safe to operate, and a couple months of concerted effort to rebuild the original brush boards with new rattan. The brushes are incredibly loud while operating, and we aren't sure if we'll be able to operate it regularly on our Fort Edmonton track due to how close the buildings (and their windows!) are to our track. Although double-ended, Sask 200 can't run on our High Level Bridge line due to only having hand brakes. ERRS isn't sure how we'll make use of it, but even having a car like this in operable condition for static display will be great for us.

SMR 200 is one of just five Ottawa-built snow sweepers in preservation and is (now) the only one in operational condition. There are some intriguing "missing links" in this car's history, including that it was built in 1907 but didn't arrive in Saskatoon until 1913, with its whereabouts in the interim unknown. I'm also not sure about its history between the Saskatoon system quitting in 1951 and ERRS acquiring it in 1986.

News from Michigan

A couple of updates from Michigan regarding extant electric cars have popped up in the last couple of days. These don't involve updates to the PNAERC list per se, but they're still interesting.

The first is that Grand Rapids Grand Haven & Muskegon 8, the "Merlin," is in the process of getting a new home. It hasn't moved - rather, a substantial brick enclosure is being constructed around the car by the Coopersville Historical Museum. The car already had a fairly nice shelter over it, but of course this will obviously be an improvement and will keep the car entirely protected from the weather. The shelter is also built to mimic the style of the history museum itself, located just a few feet away in the old interurban substation. Very impressive! The photo above comes from the museum's Facebook page.

In less positive news, an abandoned building in Kalamazoo caught fire yesterday and was heavily damaged. This wouldn't be very newsworthy to us except that an ex-Michigan Railways double-truck snow sweeper has been attached to one side of this building for quite some time. It appears that the sweeper was largely unharmed, and that the fire damage was on the other side of the building, but if the building gets demolished, the sweeper will probably go too. This car isn't on the PNAERC roster, but rather on my "non-preserved electric cars" list. I'm not sure who built it or when, but there's reputed to be an excellent book coming out soon on Michigan Railways, so answers may be forthcoming. Anyone interested in a snow sweeper body?

Roanoke Master Unit Changes Hands

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.

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.)

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.

PCCs Return to Philadelphia

I'm a couple of weeks late on this, but SEPTA has put its heavily rebuilt PCC-II cars back into regular service on Route 15 for the first time since the line was bustituted at the start of 2020. Some, maybe most - but I don't think all - of the 2300-series cars have undergone a major in-kind overhaul and are now back in service. The trouble is, I'm not sure which cars are still being rebuilt or have yet to be rebuilt. Anyone have an updated fleet status report? Here's what I know, or at least think I know:

2322, 2324, 2327, 2328, 2332, 2333, 2337 - overhauled, in service

2320, 2321, 2325, 2329, 2330, 2331, 2334, 2335 - not sure whether these have been overhauled or whether they are in service

2323, 2326, 2336 - currently undergoing overhaul?

Photo above by Marc Glucksman

The Windsor Streetcar

It's been nearly five years since the frame-up restoration of Sandwich Windsor & Amherstburg 351 was completed. The work was done by an automobile restoration contractor retained by the City of Windsor with the goal of putting the car on display on the Detroit River waterfront. That hasn't happened yet, but I believe progress is being made toward constructing a shelter at Legacy Park.

In the meantime, car 351 has remained in storage, and very few photos of it have appeared online since restoration was completed. Until now! Thanks to Jon Fenlaciki, who visited the car today and sent in the below pictures.

The car originally had Standard O-50 trucks, but from other photos I believe these are Brill 27MCB trucks salvaged from an unknown rapid transit car.

Penn Ohio PCCs

It was brought to my attention that a post made yesterday on Reddit, of all places, includes photos of the rarely seen Pittsburgh PCCs at Penn Ohio Electric Railway in Ashley, Ohio. That may be a misnomer at this point; the person who posted the photos says they recently purchased the property the cars sit on, and the two remaining PCCs just came with the purchase. There used to be a third PCC, Pittsburgh 1713, which was conveyed to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum last year. That leaves two: air-electric 1639 and 1949 sealed-window postwar car 1728.

These two cars have been listed as being "for sale" since 2017, but the post makes a couple of things pretty clear. First, when PTM acquired car 1713 last year, the owners of the three cars made these two available to the museum as parts sources. As such, at least some of the more valuable parts and components have been scavenged to help keep cars in the PTM fleet operating. Second, the current owners have no particular interest in these cars being moved somewhere else to rot away. Their current intention is to scrap both, and the PNAERC listings for both cars have been updated to reflect that.

This isn't a huge historical loss, as there are other examples of both 1600- and 1700-series Pittsburgh cars preserved, most notably at PTM. But there aren't as many as you might think. If you discount the cars remanufactured as 4000s and the six soon-to-be-cut-up 1700s in Windber, car 1728 is one of just seven 1700-series cars still in existence. Of the other six, two are at PTM, two are plinthed outdoors, one is in private hands and one is nicely stuffed and mounted at the Heinz Museum in Pittsburgh. It's unlikely any besides the two at PTM will ever run again. As for 1600s, car 1639 is one of four cars from that 1945 order still around; the other three include car 1644 at Northern Ohio Railway Museum, modernized car 1799 at PTM, and the heavily rebuilt car with the LRV front end at Buckeye Lake.

AEM7 Arrives in Danbury

It seems the Danbury Railway Museum's collection of mainline electric collection is growing again. According to this video (source of the screen shot above), Amtrak 917, an AEM7 built by Electro-Motive in 1981, has been moved to the DRM property from its former storage location at a shipping terminal in Rhode Island.* This makes 917 the third AEM7 preserved, after 915 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and 945 at the Illinois Railway Museum. Of the three, it is the only example that was upgraded to AC traction around 2000 or so; the other two retain their original DC motors. This addition puts the list at 2,089 pieces of equipment.

As I wrote here, DRM is now in the same league as IRM and RRMofPA - not coincidentally, the other two owners of AEM7s - when it comes to its mainline electric collection. DRM now has 11 pieces of mainline electric equipment, compared with nine at RRMofPA and 11 at IRM. DRM might not have a locomotive of such national significance as Strasburg's DD1, or a crowd pleaser quite like the operable South Shore 803 in Union, but Danbury's collection includes unique pieces like the Grand Central Terminal wrecker, the last NYC T-Motor, and all three surviving New Haven "washboard" MU cars. Now, all they need is a GG1!

*EDIT: It appears that the AEM7 actually arrived in Danbury on June 7th.

North Shore 228 Restored

Hot on the heels of Illinois Terminal line car 1702 being outshopped by IRM, another Midwestern organization has restored and operated a piece of non-revenue equipment that hadn't run since retirement. This is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 228, a box motor (known as an "MD car," or merchandise despatch car, on the North Shore) built by Cincinnati Car Company in 1922 and just completed at the East Troy Electric Railroad. It's shown above in a photo from this Facebook group depicting a test run a few weeks ago; its official debut was this weekend, like IT 1702 during a private event.

Car 228 was one of an ill-fated trio of electric cars that made their way to the Indiana Railway Museum in Westport, Indiana, around 1963. The three cars - 228, North Shore combine 250, and Chicago Aurora & Elgin steel-sheathed wood coach 318 - were purchased from the Westport group by The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society (TWERHS), which at the time operated over the East Troy line, around 1971. The two North Shore cars made it to TWERHS intact, but car 318 had its ends crushed during a Penn Central switching accident and was later scrapped for parts in Mukwonago.

The two North Shore cars were in rough shape, though. Combine 250 was acquired by IRM when TWERHS folded in 1988 and later scrapped; MD car 228 stayed in East Troy and work on rebuilding it began but was suspended for some 25 or 30 years. In 2022, though, the MD car went into ETER's new shop building in Mukwonago to complete the job. Of the five North Shore MD cars preserved, this is one of two that is operational and is the only one to have undergone a complete restoration.

Whiskey Island Car Pusher Finds New Home

A few weeks ago, we posted a story here about the last Hulett ore unloaders in existence - a pair of disassembled Huletts stored at Whiskey Island in Cleveland - being threatened, along with a trio of diminutive narrow-gauge electric car pushers, or shunters, that sat with them. While I don't believe any hopeful news has emerged on the Huletts themselves, one of the three car pushers has found a new home. The Port of Cleveland has posted here that Pennsylvania Railroad 1, one of the three car pushers at Whiskey Island, was loaded onto a truck and removed from the site for preservation. The locomotive is a 1912 Baldwin-Westinghouse, identical (I believe) to this one, which is preserved in Youngstown. The photo above is from the Port of Cleveland's Facebook post.

Its destination is apparently Buckeye Lake, Ohio, but it's not owned by Buckeye Lake Trolley. It's the first piece of equipment on the PNAERC list under the ownership of the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, or AIMCM, which is a geographically dispersed organization focused on mining and industrial equipment preservation. The group has its main workshop site at Buckeye Lake, on the same property as Buckeye Lake Trolley, and has a public exhibition site in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. AIMCM also owns a pair of Toronto CLRVs, 4024 and 4170, but those two cars are stored at the Halton County Radial Railway in Ontario and are currently listed with that organization's collection on PNAERC.

Two more PRR car pushers are still in the weeds at Whiskey Island awaiting possible salvation. One is reputedly numbered 2, but the third isn't on PNAERC because I don't have a fleet number or any other information on it. Interested in a very large and ungainly-looking lawn ornament?

Illinois Terminal Line Car Runs

As outlined on our sister Hicks Car Works blog here and here, the Illinois Railway Museum has gotten its Illinois Terminal line car, IT 1702, operating for the first time since it left the IT in 1958. Museum volunteers began working on restoring the car's body in 2021, work that was completed in early 2024, and the car's control system was rebuilt over the last five months or so to get it operating for an event this past weekend.

The car's status on PNAERC has been updated from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally." Another update at IRM has been made to IT 415, the first car ever to run at the museum back in 1966. This lightweight interurban was taken out of service in 2020 for exterior restoration, and that work was completed within the past couple of weeks as well. Its status has been updated to "operated often," as it has long been a mainstay of public operations at IRM and is expected to return to a prominent role.

Car 54, There You Are

Back about three years ago, in this post, I described removing several cars from the PNAERC list that had simply gone missing. Without any recent news, I presumed that the cars - most of which had been in private hands - were gone. I'm happy to say that the very first one on that list has now turned up intact!

Kansas City Clay County & St. Joseph 54 is a rather unusual all-steel box motor, one of only two cars still in existence from that line and the only box motor. It's shown above in a photo taken, and posted on Facebook, about two weeks ago by Mr. Bob Matthys of Camden Point, Missouri. Mr. Matthys is apparently the new owner of car 54; judging from the photos, the car had been abandoned derelict in a grove of trees on a farm, but Mr. Matthys purchased the car, cleared the trees as shown below, and hauled it off the farm.

I'm not sure what the long-term plans for car 54 are, but it appears to be on a substantial trailer and not in immediate danger of dissolving. I believe this car has the same construction as the KCCC&StJ's passenger cars, which means it has a steel roof, which has presumably helped it. With luck, perhaps it will be fixed up for display on its home territory. Thanks to Johnny Myers for making me aware of this.

Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200 Update

Many thanks to Thomas Mafrici, who has sent along an update of the progress on Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200, which he owns. The rebuilding of this car, which he acquired as a true cadaver, is one of the most impressive traction restoration projects underway right now, and it's fascinating to see the progress on this virtually frame-up rebuild of a classic 1906 Cincinnati-built wooden interurban.

A lot of progress has clearly been made on the roof framing since the last update in early 2023. 

The first two photos are of the "good side" of the car, in terms of condition, and show all the work that has gone into recreating the ends of the car, both of which were essentially gone.

Thomas reports that he's just finished framing out the "bad side" of the car, shown here. 

The new posts and roof carlines look beautiful.

Finally, a photo taken of the car's interior showing all the new wood in the roof.

EDIT: Thomas sent along a few more progress photos, shown below - enjoy!