Atlanta Streetcar in Limbo

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for pointing me to a Facebook post that contained some unexpected news about Georgia Railway & Power 269: the car has left the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, its home for some 24 years.

Car 269 was built by Cincinnati in 1921 and was used on the line to Duluth, making it the only one of the handful of surviving Atlanta streetcars able to make that claim. As the above photo shows, it's in rough shape and has an end missing, but it's been kept tarped at SERM. However, the car appears to have been sold to a developer called SoDo Atlanta LLC (SoDo = South Downtown). SoDo has removed nearly all the remaining wood from the car, sand-blasted the steel, and moved it into a building at 82 Peachtree Street in the city.

The video on their site says "We imagine the car will become a small restaurant, bar, or unique hospitality experience in the near future." That could go either way; the car could be cosmetically restored as a centerpiece display, like this car or like one of the spaghetti restaurant cars. Or it could end up like this. For the moment, I've updated the car's ownership, but it's still on the PNAERC list. SERM is down two two cars on the list, a MARTA rapid transit car they acquired in 2022 and a second Atlanta streetcar body, Georgia Power 636.