Four New Cars for Danbury

Ending 2025 on a positive note, the Danbury Railway Museum last week received a quartet of new cars for its growing collection of mainline electric equipment. Metro-North M3A-type cars 8002, 8003, 8106, and 8107 were brought onto the museum grounds in a late-night move. Thanks to Jordan Helzer for alerting me to this Facebook post, and to DRM and Marc Glucksman/River Rail Photo for the above picture from that post.

The four identical M3A cars were built in 1984-1985 by Budd and ran for their careers on the old New York Central electric division to Croton-on Hudson and White Plains. They're similar to the two M2 cars already at Danbury, which ran on the old New Haven, but unlike those cars they're "pure" 600V DC cars and do not have equipment for high-voltage AC operation. They also don't have pantographs. Most of the M3A class is still in regular service, but these were early retirees and were donated to DRM by Metro-North for preservation. The DRM traction collection has now grown to 15 pieces, quite an impressive collection and one that is exclusively mainline electric in nature, while the overall PNAERC roster is 2,086 cars.

Sheridan Streetcar Relocated

Sheridan Railway & Light 115, the only electric car from Wyoming to be preserved in its home state, has been relocated. According to this article on the Sheridan Media site, the car was moved in November from its recent location in a construction company yard along Higby Road to a new site southwest of Sheridan on the property of the Sheridan Community Land Trust's Big Goose Natural Area. There, the plan is to construct a shelter over the car and, presumably fix it up.

I'm really not sure how many electric railways ever operated in Wyoming, but I wouldn't be surprised if they could be numbered on one hand. I believe car 115 is one of only two Wyoming streetcars in existence, the other being an ex-Cheyenne Birney preserved at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. It was built by American in 1911 and it's pretty typical of single-truck deck-roof cars American built for a lot of cities. One unusual aspect is that it was built for single-end operation, with doors on only one side, however it was equipped with controllers at both ends and seems to have been operated in double-ended fashion as a necessity, at least initially.

And in unrelated news, thanks to Olin Anderson for passing along word that the Tacoma "turtleback" streetcar body that was located at the Ballard Terminal Railroad in Seattle has been demolished. I was never able to figure out this car's number, and between that and having virtually no solid information on it, it never made it onto the PNAERC list, though I did have on my "non-preserved cars" list. My best guess is that it was a 200-series cars identical to car 202, which is preserved in Arlington.

More Cars Deaccessioned by Seashore

(UPDATED - see bottom of post) It's been a little while since there have been any updates to Seashore's re-homing plans, but news has arrived of a few updates. Specifically, three more cars have been marked for disposition.

The first car, shown above in a 2020 photo, is MBTA 0997. This is a 1928 Wason-built rapid transit car built for the Main Line Elevated in Boston. It's been at Seashore since 1981. It's identical to car 01000, which is restored and operational, but 0997 hasn't run in a number of years and looks to be in rough - albeit complete - condition. It's been made available for re-homing. (Seashore actually has four cars from this series, but the other two, 0986 and 0996, are in semi-derelict condition back in the woods and have never been considered part of the historic collection.)

The next recent addition to the re-homing list is SEPTA 1018, a Philadelphia-Delaware Bridge car built by Brill in 1936. The above photo, taken way back in 2008, is the most recent image of this car I can find, making it unusually elusive. Identical car 1023 is also at the museum; a decade or so ago that car was painted in original blue and silver colors and was even made operational for a time, but car 1018 has remained in its end-of-service Broad Street Subway "dip" red livery and has never, to my knowledge, operated at Seashore. Cars 1018 and 1023 are two of six cars of this class still in existence, with the others including a pair on PATCO in Lindenwold (albeit modified for work service), a car stored at Fern Rock Yard in Philadelphia, and a car preserved at the Rockhill Trolley Museum

The last car added to the deaccession list is Atlantic City 299, shown here in 2016. Of the three cars, this one is the most historically significant but is also in the worst condition by far. It's a double-truck lightweight streetcar built by St. Louis in 1925 for Fort Wayne, Indiana, making it the last extant car from that city and (I believe) one of only six streetcars in existence from any city in the Hoosier State. It ran as Fort Wayne Street Railway 552 until it was sold to Atlantic City in 1946, where it was modernized a bit and renumbered 299. It was retired in 1955 and its body was sold to someone in Cross Keys, NJ, where it remained until Seashore got it in 1988 as part of their "last roundup" carbody collecting campaign. For a time, the car was stored in the Fairview barn, but recently it seems to have been moved outside and it has now been slated for scrapping due to the condition of the body.

UPDATE: Seashore has also confirmed that they've recently scrapped Ottawa Transportation Commission 825, a 1923 Ottawa-built car body described here that was in atrocious condition. There are two other Ottawa 800s preserved in Canada, albeit from the 1927 order, and between that and the truly skeletal nature of car 825, it's hard to say this is much of a loss (the above photo was taken back in 2016, before the car's roof caved in). I've removed car 825 from the PNAERC roster, leaving Seashore with 187 cars on the list and a grand total of 2,082 cars on the list in all.

Interurban Cars Moved to Halton County

Thanks to Gord McOuat, who passes along word - and photographic proof - that a pair of very historic, not to mention complete, interurban cars arrived today at Halton County Radial Railway. They were deaccessioned by Exporail, aka the Canadian Railway Museum, last December as outlined here. To my knowledge, these are the first electric cars to depart CRM as part of that collection rationalization effort.

The first car, shown above and in the photos below taken a short time ago while it was being prepped at Exporail for shipment, is Montreal & Southern Counties 104. This attractive interurban car is one of three ex-M&SC cars that I would classify as something of a "suburban" car, though it's still a big car - it's just not as big as the 600-series M&SC cars. Anyway, this car was built by Ottawa in 1912 along with combine 107, which it joins at Halton County. These two cars both have HL control, so they will be able to run in MU. The third M&SC car of this general type in preservation, car 9 at Branford, has K-control.

This will probably be car 104's last spin on a turntable for a very long time!

The second car, shown here and in the photos below, is London & Port Stanley 10. Built by Jewett in 1915, it is one of four L&PS steel interurban cars preserved, and it joins two of the others - car 4, which was a restaurant for decades, and car 8, which is fully restored and operational - at Halton County. Though it may not be ready to "put the pan up and go," car 10 is complete and in far better condition than car 4. It looks like an excellent candidate for restoration, meaning Halton County likely has the opportunity to get a pair of two-car interurban trains out on their railroad in the coming years. 

As shown below, both cars were loaded in the snow at Exporail during the past couple of days and made the trek to Rockwood. One point of trivia is that for both of these cars, Halton County is only their third owner. Both ran their entire service lives, well into the 1950s, for the same interurban line that ordered them, and both were owned by CRM since retirement.

Big 1910s interurban cars stand out from the crowd a bit at the gas station!

Gord mentioned that at least some of the other electric cars deaccessioned by Exporail have indeed found takers, so more information on that should be forthcoming. For now, it's great to see that cars 10 and 104 have found a good home at Halton County. The CRM collection is now down to 39 pieces on PNAERC, while the HCRR electric collection grows to 60.

Milwaukee parlor car off the list

Thanks to Sean Bowen of the East Troy Electric Railroad for relating the news that Milwaukee Street Railway 200 has collapsed. It was recently deaccessed by that organization because its condition had deteriorated beyond the point of reasonable salvation, and its location made it essentially impossible to retrieve intact. The car has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Car 200 was built in the company shops in 1892 as a single-truck parlor car. It was rebuilt in 1907 for use as a hospital car, and in 1919 it was rebuilt again for use as a tool car. It was retired in 1931. Its body was acquired in 1986 by The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society and moved to East Troy, where a few years later ownership was assumed by ETER. For many years the car sat in the barn at East Troy. In 2009, during a major collection purge that saw ETER dispose of several PCC streetcars and 'L' cars as well as an interurban car body, car 200 left East Troy (pictured above). It was moved to Spring Green, where an off-site group of volunteers planned to rebuild it with a steel frame.

This effort didn't get very far, though it does appear that they did some disassembly and installed that steel frame. By the late 2010s, the off-site group had essentially melted away and for a time the car's condition and whereabouts were something of a mystery. But it turned up again in 2020, by which time it looked like the photo above. As I mentioned, it's been in a location that made retrieval very difficult, so ETER wasn't able to get it out of Spring Green and bring it back to East Troy. With the loss of car 200, the ETER collection stands at 24 cars and the overall PNAERC list includes a total of 2,083 cars.

Lake Shore Electric car removed from list

One of the cars on the PNAERC list that I was never able to find a recent photo of was Lake Shore Electric 15, which is why the photo above was taken in 1938. This car, built in 1900 by Barney & Smith, was a body located on private property west of Greenwich, Ohio. It was (barely) visible on aerial photos and Google Street View, and people familiar with the owner related the car's identity, but it was known to be in poor condition. The same was true of the other piece of railroad equipment on the property, a wooden Wagner sleeping car of more historical value.

Anyway, thanks to Noah Bailor for pointing out via the "Ahead of the Torch" Facebook page that LSE 15 had disappeared. Sure enough, Street View images from last month confirm it's no longer in the location it used to occupy. Given its reputedly poor condition, I strongly suspect it has been demolished, so I've taken it off the PNAERC list. The list now includes 15 LSE cars, including LSE 7, a sister car of 15 that also isn't quite in pristine condition; and seven Barney & Smith cars, including LSE 7 and two other interurban cars along with one streetcar and three Lackawanna MU parlor cars. The list overall stands at 2,084 cars.

Public Service Car Runs

There's exciting news from Piscataway, New Jersey, today. Public Service Coordinated Transport 2651, one of just two of the system's big, iconic deck-roof passenger cars still in existence, was made operational again for the first time in something like 70 years. The car was salvaged as a car body in the 1970s, and for the last few decades has been the subject of an involved restoration project to make it complete and return it to operation. Its owner, the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society, posted some videos on their Facebook page showing the initial test "trips." For now, the car is in the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway, but rumors suggest it may be heading to a nearby trolley museum where it will have a chance to stretch its legs. For now, congrats to the NJERHS group on a major milestone for this historic car.