"Almond Joy" Car Arrives in Kingston

The Trolley Museum of New York announced today on their Facebook page that SEPTA 618, one of two preserved "Almond Joy" cars from the Market-Frankford Elevated in Philadelphia, has arrived at the TMNY site in Kingston. The car has been listed under TMNY ownership since May 2025, which is when it departed its former home at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine, but it had been kept at an intermediate storage facility for the last 10 months before it landed at its new home. Car 618 is a single-unit (as opposed to part of married pair) car built by Budd in 1960.

I'm a little hazy on the end of its career, but I believe it was one of a handful of these cars kept around for work service after the remainder of the Budd fleet was retired in 1999. Regardless, in 2002 the car went to Seashore, where it was joined by a pair of standard-gauge ex-PATH "K car" trucks that had been placed under a different "Almond Joy" car that had seen use on the standard-gauge Norristown high-speed line from 1989 to 1992. Those trucks had been set aside upon retirement for exactly this purpose, i.e., making an "Almond Joy" car usable at a standard-gauge trolley museum. Car 618 was never placed on those trucks, though, and spent its time at Seashore on a truck trailer. It was conveyed to TMNY in January 2024. Sometime soon, it will be put on standard-gauge trucks for the first time at TMNY.