First Portland LRV Preserved

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for forwarding along this link announcing that TriMet (MAX) 101, the first light rail vehicle built for the Portland light rail system, has been moved to the Oregon Electric Railway Museum for preservation. The image above is a screen grab from the video posted on the museum's Facebook page.

Car 101 was built by Bombardier in 1983, making it the first Bombardier-built LRV in preservation. It underwent some testing in Pueblo, Colorado, in late 1983 before delivery to Portland the following year and entry into service in 1986. The Portland light rail system was the third modern system of its type to open in the US, following San Diego in 1981 and Buffalo (which was intended to be a heavy-rail subway but morphed into a hybrid light rail system when funding ran short) in 1984.

I've also added a new top-level "car type" classification to the PNAERC list. Until now, I've been classifying LRVs as rapid transit cars, but I've just created a new "light rail vehicle" classification. There are now 14 LRVs on the list, including seven San Diego U2 cars, four 1970s-era Boeing SLRVs, and three one-offs, including TriMet 101. OERHS also joins Western Railway Museum and Southern California Railway Museum as the only organizations to roster LRVs of multiple types, though WRM still leads the way with three different types of LRV (and from three different systems, no less).

CTA Budds Back from the Dead

The CTA has been maintaining an historic fleet for about a decade or so now, and it has recently comprised one pair of 1920s-era Cincinnati-built 4000s, two pairs of 1950s-era St. Louis-built 6000s, one pair of 1969 Budd-built 2200s, and three pairs of 1970s-era Boeing-built 2400s. But a second pair of 2200s is now back from the dead! Married-pair cars 2231 and 2232 have been retrieved from Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, where they were shipped in 2012 following retirement for use in training, and have returned to Chicago. The news was reported here, along with the above photo, courtesy of LaQuan Miller.

That brings the size of the CTA historic fleet up to 16 cars. That's far smaller than the New York historic fleet, of course, but it's enough to represent every major class of 'L' car used in Chicago since the dawn of the steel car era - no minor feat.

PCC Going Up for Auction in California

The story behind this post from May seems to be confirmed - per this website, the Bright's Pioneer Museum collection in Le Grand, California, is going to be sold at the end of October in an online auction. Individual lots haven't been listed yet, but a couple of the photos (including the one reproduced here) prominently show Muni PCC 1150, so you can be pretty confident it will be in the auction along with the rest of the stuff.

I have no idea what will happen to 1150, of course - and I'm not even sure whether I'll know after the auction what ended up happening to it - but it would be nice if the car went to a good home. From the photo, it looks practically pristine, without even flaking paint - just some dust and dirt.