The Terrible Trolley Rides Again

Today in a dramatic ceremony the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum unveiled its latest restoration project: Port Authority Transit 1713, better known as the "Terrible Trolley." This car, a 1949-vintage PCC built for Pittsburgh Railways, was in 1980 painted in an elaborate livery honoring the Pittsburgh Steelers. The car was acquired by PTM two years ago and since then has undergone a speedy restoration to its 1980 appearance. The car is undoubtedly eye-catching, and as popular as the Steelers are in Pittsburgh, it's sure to raise awareness of the museum with a fan base that may not currently be very familiar with the museum.

As for car 1713, its condition has been updated to reflect that it is in operation at the museum. This means that of the eight 1700-series Pittsburgh cars on the PNAERC list, the only two that are restored and operating are both at PTM. (I should also mention that I recently removed several cars in this series from the list that were at Windber because they had clearly collapsed, making them effectively unsalvageable in my opinion and, therefore, no longer "preserved.") The photo above is from a Railpace post on Facebook.

And in unrelated news, Bill Wall sent along this link and alerted me to the fact that Branford has just celebrated the 125th birthday of its line! The line from Branford to East Haven via Short Beach opened on July 31st, 1900, and has been in operation continuously ever since, which is quite a distinction. Of course, the math  majors among our readership will realize that the trolley museum has operated the line for significantly longer now than did the Connecticut Company. The museum celebrated this anniversary with a ceremony at Sprague Station, in East Haven (photos and information here). Kudos to BERA on this milestone! The photo shown here is from that first link and here.

Update from Branford

Thanks to Bill Wall, who has sent along an update of recent progress in the shop at Branford:

First news item is the reappearance of Montreal Tramways locomotive 5002, which was flooded in 2011 and 2012 by Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. The motors have been redone and while they were out the opportunity taken to rebuild the very worn out trucks. With a newly made center plate, new old stock Red Arrow center door wheels replacing the cracked or broken tiny pie plate wheels, an armature rewound and other work, 5002 hasn't been this good mechanically since it was built. Another one brought back to life...

Thanks to the Amherst Railway Society for their grant supporting this 1917 homebuilt steeplecab.

Connecticut Company car 775 has had the majority of its rattan seats redone just in time for the 125th anniversary (7/31)  of the opening of the original Branford Electric Railway on the very route that is now our museum line. A total of 10 bottoms and 10 seat backs were redone with new material, courtesy of combining two grants from the Mass. Bay RRE and the NRHS, along with some internal support. A special thanks to both organizations for helping to make this happen. Attached you will find some photos of before and after the work was done. 

Ed. note: A how-to guide to restoring rattan seats, written by Bob Yohe of Branford and provided by Bill Wall, is posted on our sister blog Hicks Car Works here.

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.

Cars in Limbo

The PNAERC roster uses an assortment of criteria for judging whether to include a car. An attempt to explain all these criteria can be found here, linked from the landing page for the list. The first question I ask is whether it's an electric car, which is usually - though not always - obvious. The second question, which can be thornier, is whether the car is "preserved." If the answer is yes (and the car meets the other PNAERC criteria), then it goes onto the list. But if it isn't really "preserved" as such - if it still exists but is in more of a state of limbo or is more of a utility, e.g. it's part of a structure - then it's excluded.

However, a few years ago a fellow IRM volunteer named Lucas McKay started tracking these "not-quite-preserved" cars in a Google spreadsheet. After a while, I took over maintenance of this list. While this list is linked from the Preserved Traction Blog site, it's hidden down at the bottom of the righthand column and is totally invisible if you're reading on mobile. Marc Glucksman recommended highlighting its existence, which I think was an excellent suggestion. So click here to view the "non-preserved" list.

This list is a lot less complete than the PNAERC roster proper. There's almost no mechanical information, in part because almost nothing on the list still has any of its mechanical components. It's far less complete, not only because I've only been maintaining it for a few years but because almost all the entries are in private ownership and are a lot harder to track down. There are some well-known cars like the PE car used as the Formosa Cafe and a smattering of bodies still at Lake Lamoka, New York (including the ex-Corning & Painted Post carcass shown above). There are also quite a few little-known entries. And I'm always looking for more to add, so let me know if you come across anything that isn't on the list.

Enjoy!

NTT Box Motor Update

I have updated the ownership of Northern Texas Traction 332, a heavily modified box motor originally built in the NTT shops in 1912, to reflect that it is now in private hands and (evidently) on display in Denton. This car was found as a body in the mid-1980s and moved to McKinney Avenue Transit Authority in the early 1990s, where MATA started working to convert it into a parlor and dining car. But work stalled out at some point, and by 2014 the car was evicted from the tight quarters at the MATA barn and moved to the Museum of the American Railroad site in Frisco. There it sat on display for a number of years (the photo above was taken in 2015) but I realized at some point that it had disappeared, so I'd changed it's status to "unknown." I just learned that it's back in the hands of the man who originally found it back in the 1980s (I'll confess that I'm not sure whether he's retained ownership this whole time) and is supposedly on display next to a restaurant in Denton. Anyone have any photos, or even details on where in Denton it is?

Anyway, the MARR collection is now down to 11 pieces, all mainline railroad equipment: 10 ex-Illinois Central "Highliners" and a PRR GG-1.

New England News

A couple of pieces of interesting pieces of information have surfaced from New England. First, it seems SEPTA 618 is on its way to its new home at the Trolley Museum of New York. I've updated its ownership in the PNAERC roster because it's left Seashore, though it hasn't yet arrived in Kingston. The car should be a good match with TMNY, given that it comes with standard-gauge trucks originally off a PATH K-car, so it can be towed in operation at its new home.

And thanks go to Matthew Juergens from the Connecticut Trolley Museum, who passes along information about recent happenings there. The museum is currently in the process of repainting their two-axle Corbin steeplecab, E2. A photo of the recent progress is below, and I have updated the locomotive's status to "undergoing restoration." Thanks, Matthew!

PCC for Sale?

An intriguing post showed up a couple of days ago on the Facebook page for Aumann Vintage Power, which I'll confess I'd never heard of before. They are evidently auctioning off a huge collection of tractors, trucks, and other miscellaneous equipment (including the school bus involved in the Chowchilla kidnapping, of all things) sometime this summer. Why is this of interest? Because what's being auctioned off is (apparently) the entire collection of Bright's Pioneer Exhibit in Merced, California - and Bright's appears on the PNAERC roster! Tucked way back among all the random machinery is the ex-St. Louis Public Service, ex-Muni PCC pictured above in a photo taken in 2011. The car is Muni 1150, which was built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1140 and ended its service career in 1979, from what I can tell. According to one source familiar with the Muni fleet, the car was taken out of service and moved to Merced right away, likely being put into indoor storage as soon as it got there. As such, it's probably in better shape than just about any other ex-SLPS Muni car out there except for the two or three that have been fully restored.

Now, I have to admit, the PCC doesn't appear in any of the photos on the Facebook post, so I can't be certain it's included in the auction. But it seems likely. Aumann says they will add a full listing to their website soon, so that should answer any questions. If car 1150 goes up for auction, hopefully it finds a good home.

On a totally unrelated subject, I've removed the above car, Companhia Municipal de Transportes Coletivos 1791, from the PNAERC roster. It's an ex-Third Avenue Railway System "Huffliner" built by TARS in 1938 and sold to the Sao Paolo, Brazil, system in 1947. Until sometime in the last couple of decades it was on display under a shelter at the Clube Esportivo Nautico de Guarapiranga, located near Sao Paolo, but I cannot find any evidence that it's still there despite the club being very well documented in online photographs. Until I can find some evidence that the car still exists, it's off the list.

Atlanta Car Added to List

Thanks again go to Nate Wells, who has sent along information and photos that allow me to add another car to the PNAERC list.

The car in question, shown here in photos taken last fall, is Georgia Power Company 903. It's a typical Atlanta 900-series car essentially identical to car 948, restored and operating today at Branford. For its part, car 903 was built in 1926 at almost exactly the same time as car 948. It's been kept under a roof for many decades, meaning the body actually looks like it's in decent shape except for an area near one end where the roof failed. It even appears to still wear its original paint (in fact some vestiges of its as-built livery, including pin-striping and "front entrance" lettering on the car side, are in evidence even though they were painted over later in the car's service career).

These photos were taken in car 903's longtime home in Georgia, but it was recently purchased by a collector near Montgomery, Alabama, and moved there. I can only hope it's being stored inside. Any additional information, including mechanical/electrical equipment (was the 900-939 series equipped identically to the 940-999 series?) and any plans the new owner might have for the car, would be appreciated. This is the seventh Georgia Power car on the PNAERC list, and overall the list now has a total of 2,086 cars.

Charlotte Trolleys

A huge thank you goes out to Nate Wells, who provided me with some updates on electric car preservation in North Carolina. The first update involves Carolina Power & Light 117, a longer-than-typical Birney built by Brill in 1927 for the Asheville system. This car was owned by Charlotte Trolley, and in fact was the last car on the PNAERC roster still listed under Charlotte Trolley ownership. But Nate reports that the car has, in fact, been acquired by the owner of the Savona Mill in northwest Charlotte. This is an historic mill complex that is being redeveloped as office and commercial space.

The more surprising update, at least for me, is that the two Charleston center-entrance car bodies have resurfaced! These are unusual cars built by Cincinnati in 1918 for wartime service in Charleston (there's a whole article about them in a July 1918 issue of Electric Railway Journal). There were two orders, one for trailers numbered 301-310 and one for motors numbered 311-316, and I believe both of these cars are trailers. One car is numbered 302 and the second is thought to be numbered 306 but I'm not positive of that.

Regardless, the cars were exhumed from a house back in 2006 and then spent a few years stored outdoors in Charleston before vanishing. I removed car 302 (at the time I hadn't included the second car on the list) from PNAERC back in 2021. Well, it turns out these two were bought by the Savona Mill owner and moved to Charlotte way back in 2013 as described here. They were briefly stored indoors but have been stored outside since 2015; the above photo is from this article. Google Street View shows them stored at the corner of Turner and Coxe, in steadily deteriorating condition, until about 2021 or 2022, when they were moved to (what I believe is) their current location behind a building at the southwest corner of Chamberlain and Gardner. Aerial photos suggest both cars' roofs have disintegrated, but the cars still exist and they've apparently been moved into a storage building within the last year, so they're back on the PNAERC list.

Just as a final note, I'll point out that it's a bit of a milestone to no longer have Charlotte Trolley on the PNAERC list as an owner, even though this is a bit overdue - from what I can tell, the organization was largely defunct by about 2017. But during the 1990s and early 2000s, it was quite a going concern, and played a big role in raising the profile of streetcars and light rail in Charlotte during that period. I recall visiting their barn in 2001, at which time they had car 85 in service (using a towed generator), Birney 25 on hand and purportedly under restoration, the aforementioned car 117 in storage, Red Arrow 13 being repainted, and a car from Greece on hand in good repair. But like Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson, Charlotte Trolley was arguably a victim of its own success in publicizing electric traction, and they lost their right-of-way to a new light rail system. Unlike OPT, they disbanded as an organization, but fortunately their collection is faring well elsewhere.

Manufacturer Order Lists

For quite a while, I've had a page on this blog site with links to manufacturer order lists. If you view the website on desktop, or use "website view" on mobile, it's at the bottom of the right column with a few other interesting links. Anyway, most of the manufacturer order lists have always been lists that were posted back around 2004 by the late Dr. Harold E. Cox, a well-known traction historian. He had posted lists of quite a few builders, and from what I could tell, he was going alphabetically but stopped partway through the alphabet.

Anyway, Dr. Cox passed away in 2021 at the age of 90 after a period of declining health. I had figured that his order list site might go away at some point, so I copied and saved all the information locally. At least, I thought I did. Within the past few weeks, his old website finally went dark. It was then that I discovered I had missed a few builders! I copied the lists for ACF, American, Brill, CCF, Cincinnati, Kuhlman, LaClede, and Perley Thomas, and I've now put that information back online, linked from the page above.

But I'm missing several others, most notably Danville, Jackson & Sharp, and Laconia (the Laconia list was in PDF format; the others were HTML tables). There were also lists for Barber and Federal that I didn't save, though Barber was a very small builder and Federal went out of business very early.

UPDATE: I'd like to extend a huge THANK YOU to Mark Sims, who saved the Barber, Danville, Jackson & Sharp, and Laconia order lists, and sent them to me to add to the web page linked above. These are now available for use as well. Thanks, Mark!

Fewer Highliners

The Heritage Rail Alliance spring conference was this past weekend in Boone, Iowa, and it was reported back to me that there were fewer ex-Illinois Central "Highliner" cars there than the PNAERC list may have suggested. Some digging revealed that, sure enough, the Boone & Scenic Valley has disposed of three out of the five "Highliners" that were on the property in fall of 2023. Most likely, these cars were cut up later that year or in early 2024, though I'm not exactly sure.

Anyway, Metra cars 1511 (shown above), 1551, and 1628 (shown below) have now all been removed from the PNAERC list. This leaves a total of 15 electric cars at Boone, including cars 1506 and 1523. Like the three scrapped cars, these two were built by St. Louis Car Company in 1971 and retired from service in 2007.

There are now 16 "Highliners" still on the PNAERC list: the remaining two at Boone, four at IRM, and 10 at the Museum of the American Railroad in Texas. The entire list currently stands at 2,083 pieces.

EDIT: A few weeks after this post, I received updated information indicating that the two cars retained by B&SV were not 1506 and 1523, as I had supposed, but 1511 and 1628. Cars 1506 and 1523 have apparently been scrapped. The PNAERC list has been updated with this corrected information.

'Tis the Season in Ontario...

...for finishing up electric car restorations!

First up, the Elgin County Railway Museum is closing in on completion of their lengthy and comprehensive restoration of London & Port Stanley 14. Wesley Paulson sent me this link advertising a debut, of sorts, for car 14 coming up at the end of May. There's also a photo:

Car 14 is a "stretched" L&PS car built by Jewett in 1917. It's been under restoration at ECRM for quite a few years and has seen a tremendous amount of wood and other components replaced or rebuilt.

And second, Sandwich Windsor & Amherstburg 351 has finally been dedicated and placed on display in its brand-new pavilion on the Windsor, Ontario, riverfront. This car was professionally restored - by which I mean torn all the way down to the underframe and rebuilt, with most if not all wood replaced - between late 2018 and 2019. After more than five years in storage, it was dedicated today in Windsor. Many thanks to Jon Fenlaciki for sending a series of photos detailing this event.

Car 351 is shown in its new home

The building includes historic exhibit space

Here we see how car 351 looked when it was extracted from a house in 2017

Mayor Drew Dilkens of Windsor looks through the car

L-R: John Stefani, Bernard Drouillard (Windsor area railway historian), Salina Larocque (Windsor City Parks), Norm Krentel, Jon Fenlaciki

Bernard Drouillard is on the left as Mayor Dilkens makes some remarks

Hershey Transit Car Dismantled

I believe this "news" is a year or two out of date, but a report came across my Internet browser that Hershey Transit 3 has been dismantled. I have, accordingly, taken it off the PNAERC list.

One of two Hershey Transit cars known (until now) to exist, car 3 was built as a semiconvertible combine by Brill in 1903 for the Hummeltown & Campbellstown Street Railway. It later went to Hershey, at some point got rebuilt as a line car (in-service photo here), and was retired in 1948. It has actually been in preservation for a long time: its body was acquired way back in 1965 by Trolley Valhalla, and later made its way to Buckingham Valley Trolley Association and Electric City Trolley Museum before the car went home to Hershey in 2006. The photo above shows it being moved into the old car barn in Hershey, where the local historical society was storing it (and is currently embarked on a major restoration of Hershey Transit 7, an all-steel suburban car).

Car 3's condition was extremely poor, so it was dismantled. Major components have been saved (thanks to Joel Salomon for the above photo of one of the car's ends), but if car 3 arises in the future, I would imagine it will be more of a replica than a restoration. The PNAERC list now stands at 2,086 cars total.

And in unrelated news, the Fox River Trolley Museum has acquired ex-Rio de Janeiro open car 1719 from the Middletown & Hummelstown. More information is here. This is a standard Rio double-trucker and actually spent about 20 years in South Elgin, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, when it was owned by Wendell Dillinger and stored at the museum. This change doesn't affect the PNAERC list, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Middletown Update

Thanks to Bill Wall for sending along photos and updates of the Middletown & Hummelstown collection being thinned. Four cars were scrapped over the last few days. The first two, shown below in photos taken a few months ago, were Chicago Transit Authority S371 and S372. These were CTA 4000s rebuilt in 1972 as work motors, sold in 1979 to the Buckingham Valley group, and then acquired by the M&H in the mid-1980s for parts.

These cars are certainly no big loss, especially given their condition, but it is kind of interesting how drastically the ranks of surviving 4000-series work motors have been thinned in recent years. From seven or eight examples a decade ago, there are now only two CTA S-series 4000-type work motors still in existence: S373 at IRM, stored in rough condition, and S374 at Northern Ohio, not accessioned and stored in poor condition.

The third car that has been cut up in Middletown is MBTA double-end PCC 3323, ex-Dallas Railway & Terminal 605. This car was at Branford from 1980 to 1992 and went to the M&H as part of a trade deal, but was in extremely poor condition thanks in part to salt damage from its years in Boston. The photos below were taken by Bill Wall. Trucks from one of the work motor 4000s are visible next to the PCC.

There are now 11 Dallas double-end PCCs on the list, or 10 if you discount the car in Windber that is due to be scrapped anytime. All but one of those is at Seashore.

And the final car, other than a Pullman heavyweight car that is supposedly getting cut up this week, is Philadelphia snow sweeper C121, shown below in photos by Bill Wall.

Parts from this car are being salvaged for use at other trolley museums. (Edit: C121 isn't being fully dismantled until Tuesday, but enough of it was gone by Monday evening to justify taking it off the list.) I was never really clear on the history of C121; my records suggest it was retired in 1975, but I don't know how it got to the M&H, which didn't really exist until the mid-1980s. Anyway, as with the CTA 4000s and the PCC, this is not a big loss from a perspective of historical significance. There are still eight of these big Philly sweepers in existence, a couple of which are in very poor shape but several of which are very nicely preserved.

When Wendell Dillinger died in 2023, there were 24 cars on the PNAERC list under M&H ownership. That number is now down to 15. Besides eight Lackawanna MU cars, the fleet now consists of four Philadelphia cars (a PCC, two ex-CTA "spam cans," and a Red Arrow 80-series car); two Brooklyn cars (a convertible and a box motor); and the ex-Kansas City steeplecab. The PNAERC list in its entirety now stands at 2,087 cars.

New Technology at NYTM

Thanks to Edrick Ang for news that New York City Transit Authority 3007, shown above, was moved to the New York Transit Museum today. Thanks also to James McGinty, who posted this photo on Facebook. The car has apparently been spruced up and made presentable for display as an historic artifact. As such, I've added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 3007 is pretty unusual. It's one of nine R110B type cars built in 1992 for the IND/BMT side of the New York subway system as part of the "New Technology" test program. These cars (and 10 type R110A cars built for the IRT side of the system at the same time) were intended from the start as prototypes, not production cars, and they spent less than a decade in service. The last of the R110B cars were withdrawn from service in 2000, but at least some have simply been stored since then. The R110B cars were permanently arranged into three-car trains, motor-trailer-motor, and car 3007 is one of the motor cars. It has relatively early AC traction motors and chopper control. Quite a bit more information on these cars can be found here.

The PNAERC list now includes 2,091 cars in all.

Middletown Exodus

Following the move of two cars from the Middletown & Hummelstown to Rockhill last month, today another three streetcars were loaded onto flatbeds for a trip out of town. This time, the destination of all three cars was the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. All photos below are from this Facebook page.

The first car, shown above, is Red Arrow 83. This car was built in 1932 and is of the same type as car 78, a longtime stalwart of the PTM operating fleet. Car 83 has been stored outside under a tarp for many years in Middletown, but my understanding is that it's in reasonably decent condition. I believe PTM plans to keep it. (Side note: the photo for this car in the PNAERC roster is incorrect and actually shows identical car 77, which is staying in Middletown, but I can't change or update images until our next big photo upload.)

The second car, shown above, is SEPTA 2725, a standard Philadelphia PCC built in 1947. PTM already has two Philadelphia PCCs of this general design, one of them restored and in service.

And the third car, shown here, is SEPTA 2095, another Philadelphia PCC, this time built in 1948. If the rumor mill is to be believed, neither 2095 nor 2725 will become part of the PTM historic collection. One may get scrapped for parts in Washington, but at least one is supposedly destined for a new home somewhere in the northeast. As always, information, corrections, and updates are appreciated! In the meantime, I've updated all three cars to show their new owner as PTM (although as I write this, they're technically in transit and haven't gotten to Washington yet). PTM's collection now stands at 53 pieces while the M&H is down to 19 cars listed on the PNAERC roster. EDIT: PTM posted on their Facebook page that car 2725 is, indeed, intended as a parts source. Its PNAERC record has been updated.

Berkshire Hills Arrives Home

Thanks to Jordan Helzer, who has sent the photos shown here of the famous parlor car "Berkshire Hills" being unloaded last week at the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum. This returns it much closer to its original stomping grounds in western Massachusetts; indeed, SFTM is less than 20 miles as the crow flies from the old Berkshire Street Railway route through North Adams.

As seen above in a Sam Bartlett photo, the car body has been moved inside the SFTM barn, probably the first time it's really been kept under cover since it was sold by BSR back in 1932. It's been placed atop correct-type Brill 27A trucks that were acquired by Seashore in 2022 from IRM, which itself had salvaged them long ago from a North Shore Line snow sweeper that was scrapped back in the 1960s. SFTM obtained the trucks a year or so ago from Seashore and has cleaned them up and painted them in the meantime. With this acquisition, the SFTM traction collection stands at five pieces, all from the Bay State.