Trenton Sweeper Moves

Thanks to Bill Wall and Wesley Paulson for sending me updates of recent news on the last surviving piece of equipment from the Trenton & Mercer County, New Jersey Transit 5246, a snow sweeper built by Russell in 1921.

Today, the sweeper was moved from its recent storage location at the Bloomfield NJT light rail shops to Titusville, NJ (above photo by Bill Wall). There, its new owner, Liberty Historic Railway, has an indoor storage location arranged for it (I'm not clear on why the sweeper has been boat-wrapped - I guess extra insurance?). This piece of equipment has had quite the tumultuous couple of decades. I'm not sure when it was last used by NJT, or when it last ran, but in 2011 it was moved from the Newark subway system to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum for storage. It remained there until 2020, when it went back to NJT and was stored outside at the Bloomfield facility. As far as I know, it's been owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society during this period, but it is now owned by LHR. As the last surviving T&MC piece of equipment, it's quite historically significant.

Its condition is, shall we say, unusual. That's because it's really "a tale of two sweepers" in a single car body. The photos above and below were posted a week ago by NJERHS. The first two photos show one end of 5246, looking like it's almost ready to "put the pole up and go," as they say...

...and then there's the other end of the sweeper, where the roof has failed and partially caved in, among other structural issues. We've all seen cars where a leak in one spot caused localized deterioration, but I don't think I've ever seen quite such a night-and-day difference between two ends of the same car as here. I assume that half of it was tarped and half wasn't, or maybe one end was under a downspout off a building or something. Anyway, LHR has their work cut out for them. That group is back up to two cars on the PNAERC list, while NJT itself is down to one car, PSCT 28 - but I'm actually not certain who owns that car, and it's not on NJT property, it's a "gate guardian" at the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway.