Philadelphia Sweeper Removed from List

I was reading this very interesting history of the preservation and restoration of Public Service Coordinated Transport 2651, published recently by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, when I noticed a throwaway reference on page 22. The article mentioned that Philadelphia snow sweeper C122, the 1923 double-truck Brill shown above in 2018, was finally demolished this past spring. It had been used for 45 years or so as a bunkhouse in Ringoes, New Jersey, first by the NJERHS group and then (I suppose) by the Black River & Western after NJERHS departed for Phillipsburg in 2000. This car was a good example of something only marginally "preserved," but seeing as it was at a tourist railroad - if not quite a museum - it still qualified for inclusion on PNAERC. It's now been removed, leaving the overall list at 2,089 cars.

Of course, this is no real loss. Car C122 was a stripped hulk and never stood a reasonable chance of restoration. There are also six more of these Philly double-truck sweepers preserved, of which five are complete and in good condition, including two that are operational. It's interesting to reflect, though, that the extant examples of this type are considerably outnumbered by the ones that made it into preservation only to be scrapped later. C121 was cut up last year in Middletown, PA; C122 is described above; C124 was cut up in 2018 in Ohio after its owner died; C126 was scrapped in 2011 in Uniontown, PA, after its owner died; C132, which had been sold to Port Authority Transit in Pittsburgh but was never used there, was dismantled at PTM in 2006; C134 and C151 were both scrapped during the 1970s or 1980s at Trolley Valhalla; C143, badly damaged by vandals during years of storage near Penn's Landing, was scrapped in Baltimore in 2011; the hulk of C147 was scrapped in Rochester, NY, in 2009; and C150 was scrapped at the Fox River Trolley Museum in 1991. Sic transit gloria snow sweeper.