Find Me in the Clube

Thanks to Wesley Paulson, our official researcher, and an unnamed volunteer with the Santos Railway Museum in Brazil, who wrote to correct an error of omission on the PNAERC list. Last summer, I removed Companhia Municipal de Transportes Coletivos 1791 from the list because I hadn't been able to find any recent confirmation that it still existed - but fortunately, it appears I was wrong. The car does still exist, and we may even receive recently taken photos of it - stay tuned.

Car 1791 is a "Huffliner," built in the Third Avenue Railway System shops in 1938 as a double-ended "Peter Witt" car. This particular car was TARS 582 until it was sold to the Sao Paulo system in Brazil in 1947. It ran until 1967 and was then retired to the Clube Esportivo Nautico de Guarapiranga in Sao Paolo. As it turns out, the car is still there it just doesn't seem to be the subject of much photography (and it may be off exhibit, I'm not certain). But it's been added back to the PNAERC list, bringing the overall list to 2,090 cars.

Breda LRV Arrives at WRM

The Western Railway Museum has added another new piece to its collection. Muni 1534 is the only Breda LRV from that city to be preserved. It joins four other LRVs of three different types at Rio Vista, making WRM the first museum to roster four distinct types of LRVs. It's also the first museum to preserve two entirely distinct generations of LRV from the same city, as 1534 is one of the cars that retired the first-generation Boeing LRVs like Muni 1258.

There are some question marks about car 1534 I'm hoping to answer. First and foremost is when it was built: WRM considers it a 1998 car, because that's when it was ordered, but sources differ as to when these cars (considered the "LRV3" class in San Francisco) were actually constructed and delivered. For the time being, I've got its build date as 1998. It's already the third-newest car on the PNAERC roster, following only a pair of 5000-series Washington, DC, Metro cars built in 2001, but it's possible car 1534 may have been delivered around 2001 or so itself. EDIT: Many thanks to Richard Schauer, who points out that car 1534 was evidently built in 2001 and accepted by Muni on May 31, 2002. With this, it's in a three-way tie for the title of "youngest car on PNAERC" - for now...

For the moment, its condition is marked as "displayed operable." I'm told that WRM plans to put different pantographs on the car because its original pan shoes are so narrow that they won't work with the museum's overhead. But it's likely that 1534 will be in operation at Rio Vista soon enough. This brings the museum's collection to 70 cars on PNAERC and means the list overall stands at 2,089 pieces, with car 1534 now the 16th light rail vehicle in preservation.

Spring Cleaning in Rusk

Interested in a Cincinnati & Lake Erie freight motor? Have we got a deal for you!

The Texas State Railroad in Rusk, Texas, is apparently doing a property cleanup, and one of the pieces of equipment included on page 5 of their disposition list is the car body shown above (2019 photo by Mitch Goldman from here), Cincinnati & Lake Erie 646. Car 646 has led a tough life: built by Cincinnati in 1930 as part of the 635-649 series of modern freight motors, it was one of seven sold to American Aggregates for conversion into a diesel locomotive. This one was modified less than some - it was shortened neither in height nor length, as some of the AmAg conversions were - but it did lose its original roof profile at either end and received a number of other changes. Anyway, at some point - I think in the late 1970s, but I'm not sure - it was acquired by the Indiana Railway Museum in French Lick. They sold it in 1999 to the group restoring Northern Texas Traction 25 in Fort Worth, which salvaged the trucks off 646 and then conveyed the body to TSRR for use as a storage container at their Rusk shop site. I believe it's been in Rusk for something over 20 years.

The car is in rough shape, even for a body, so it's probably a long shot that it will find a new home. But time will tell. The fact that the disposition list is titled "TSRR disposition-scrap list" is an indication of what's likely to transpire if a taker isn't found. By the way, more history of the 1930 C&LE freight motors can be found here. Thanks to Jeron Glander for pointing out the disposition list with 646 on it.

While I'm on the subject of the TSRR, I still haven't gotten a satisfactory answer to my question about what happened to Texas Electric 605 and 613, the two interurban freight trailers that once resided on the ground in Rusk just a few steps away from C&LE 646. They've disappeared from Google aerial and Street View photos, but I don't know whether they were dismantled or just relocated somewhere else, either on the grounds or further afield. The fact that they're not on the current disposition list also seems to suggest that they may no longer be on the property. Anyone know for certain whether 605 and 613 are still there at TSRR?