Third Avenue Railway Car Lost

This one came as a surprise: Matthew Juergens emailed me to let me know that Third Avenue Railway System 637, shown below in an undated photo, was scrapped sometime around last September.

The car was owned by the Tramway Museum Graz, which is located at the end of the streetcar line in Mariatrost, on the outskirts of Graz, Austria. Car 637 was built in 1939 by TARS but only ran in New York for nine years before it, along with a bunch of its fellow 600-series cars, was conveyed to the Vienna street railway system as part of the post-World War II Marshall Plan. Renumbered into the 4200-series in Vienna (car 637 became Wiener Stadtwerke Verkehrsbetriebe 4202), these cars remained in service into the 1960s. Eight (now seven) were preserved, including three that were repatriated to the United States (at Branford, Seashore, and National Capital) and five that remained in Europe.

The five that stayed in Europe have followed divergent paths, from a couple of fully restored showpieces to one or two victims of benign neglect. But the condition of the car in Mariatrost was far from the worst of the lot, and from outward appearances car 637 was complete and solid. I'm not sure of the reason for scrapping it, just that the museum supposedly tried and failed to find a new home for it. As previously mentioned, this is not a remarkable historical loss, as there are seven other examples of this type still extant, but it's still a dismaying development. Many thanks to Matthew for sending this information along. The list now stands at 2,087 cars in all.