Kansas City Birney Made Available

One of the varied trove of extant Birney bodies has gone up for sale, according to this post on the Ahead of the Torch Facebook group. The car, shown above, is Kansas City Public Service 1545, and it has an unusual and slightly sordid history. It's a standard single-truck Birney built by American in 1919, notable in part because it remained in service long after most Birneys had gone to scrap. Car 1545 was the last Birney to run for KCPS, on May 1, 1949, and it was one of two KCPS Birneys preserved (sister car 1533 is at the National Museum of Transportation and is in the midst of a major restoration project). This car was purchased in 1950 by Jay Maeder, who at the time was the president of Speedrail, operator of the rump of the once-great Milwaukee Electric interurban system. Car 1545 was moved to Milwaukee and stored with out-of-service equipment from the Wisconsin lines. After the disastrous Speedrail wreck of September 1950, which happened in large part due to decisions made by Maeder, the remaining suburban lines out of Milwaukee were abandoned. The disgraced Maeder moved to Ohio, and in December 1952 he donated car 1545 to the Ohio Railway Museum of Worthington. ORM moved the Birney to their site in June 1953.

At ORM, the Birney was restored to operation and painted in pre-WWII KCPS colors (the same paint it wears today). I recall a story that during the 1963 Association of Railway Museums convention, held at ORM before they had completed their bridge over Route 161, car 1545 held down an unusual operation. The museum put down some isolated track on the far side of the highway, strung wire, and hauled their Birney over to this piece of track. Convention attendees willing to hike south across Route 161 could go for a ride on the 1545 on its little piece of track courtesy of traction author and trolley museum boomer Jim Blower, who served as motorman for at least part of the time (photo here).

Unfortunately, car 1545's condition deteriorated steadily. I'm not sure whether it was still running at the time of the museum's infamous schism in 1975, but by 1980, it was already in bad shape, with the roof canvas deteriorated and the windows smashed by vandals. In late 1982, the car was sold by ORM to the Fort Smith Trolley Museum, which stripped it for parts to restore the body of hometown car 224.

But FSTM never scrapped the body of 1545; since 1982 or 1983, it's been sitting safely inside their barn. They've now offered the hulk for sale or trade. Car 1545 isn't the only car in preservation to have been stripped for parts after a period of intact preservation, but I believe it's the only Birney with this dubious distinction. Whether it will find a taker will be interesting to see. Given that an identical, but complete, car is preserved elsewhere, it's not the most historic of the extant Birneys, but it would still be nice if it ends up somewhere that preserves it intact.

Magna Motor for Sale

If you're interested in an enormous electric locomotive with an industrial appearance, two different oddball operating voltages, and a truly hideous loading gauge, you're in luck! Kennecott Copper 402, currently on display out in the desert at the Oquirrh Mountain Mining Museum in Tooele, Utah, has been put up for sale.

KCC 402 is one of eight steeplecabs from that operator still in existence, but it's one of only two that are distinctive dual-voltage "Magna motors" built by GE in 1947 for service on the line to Magna, among other things. The other surviving example, KCC 407, is preserved at Rio Vista and has been the subject of recent evaluation work to determine suitability for restoration to operation. These locomotives are behemoths, weighing in at more than a quarter million pounds. But their outstanding feature is their height: listed at 18'8" over the rail, they're the tallest things on the entire PNAERC roster by more than a foot, and they're nearly two feet taller than the tallest non-KCC piece on the list, BC Rail 6001.

Thanks to David Wilkins, who sent me the link earlier today to the public auction listing. Unfortunately, the auction ended earlier this evening and the link no longer works, so I'm not sure how it ended up. Online posts suggest there's a group in the area that is interested in saving KCC 402. But they've got their work cut out for them, what with its isolated location and imposing size. The 2024 photo above is by Josh Lyman.

Not Quite Preserved

As you may already be aware, there's an adjunct to the PNAERC list that I've been maintaining for a few years, the "not-quite-preserved" list. If you view this blog on desktop, the link is at the bottom of the right column; if you're viewing the mobile version, there's a link at the bottom to view the desktop version. Anyway, this "non-preserved" list includes cars that don't qualify as "preserved" by PNAERC standards: they're electric cars that are currently in use as houses, sheds, buildings, or just sitting derelict somewhere. I've only been maintaining this list for a few years, and the owners of these cars typically don't particularly want them publicized, so the list is just a drop in the bucket of what's actually out there. But it's mildly interesting nonetheless.

So my thanks go out to a couple of folks who've written just in the last few days and contributed four new cars to the not-quite-preserved list. First up are two cars in Goffstown, New Hampshire, submitted by Ellie Flint. The first, above, is evidently Manchester & Nashua 8, if the number on the end is to be believed (and why not?). There are some nice interior photos at a real estate listing online that suggest this very likely is M&N 8, a car built by Laconia in 1907 to the same basic plan as Manchester 38 at Seashore - the main difference being that cars 7-12 were one window longer. And then right next door, the house immediately adjacent also has an electric car sticking out the end. To my eye, this looks a lot like another Manchester Street Railway car, but MSR had a lot of these square-window, railroad-roof cars, so I haven't a clue which one this might be.

EDIT: Ellie wrote back to report that there's a third car on this same road in Goffstown, almost certainly another one of the Manchester "rapid" cars like Seashore's car 38. I can't tell whether it's one of the 1906 five-window cars or one of the 1907 six-window cars, but the real estate listing here has quite a few photos, including the one above. Ellie has followed up to say that this is likely one of the five-window cars, which narrows it down to five possibilities, since there were six in the series and one is at Seashore!

And then thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski, who sent along a Street View link that shows a pair of Georgia Power Company streetcars attached to a building in Hampton, Georgia. I guess I can't be 100% certain these are Atlanta cars, but I'm 99% certain - they look a whole lot like 900-series Georgia Power cars, identical to car 948 preserved in operating condition at Branford. All four cars, both Manchester cars and both Atlanta cars, have been added to the "non-preserved" list. And if you know of an electric car body that's missing from the list, drop me a line!

Finally, let's return to the land of the living - and by living, I mean preserved and on the PNAERC list. Bill Wall sends along this link which shows an entertaining time-lapse video of Public Service 4584, Branford's New Jersey center-entrance streetcar trailer, getting washed down. I've changed 4584's status from "stored" to "undergoing restoration" thanks to an update Bill sent:

Work is still being done on the interior.  A complete Tomlinson coupler assembly was gotten for it, with coupler and has since been reinstalled.  The interior is nearly 100% done, including all the missing manual door controls, conductor’s position and so on. All the seating and frames were made new.  The IRM archives came in handy as we were able to get a complete set of prints for the car (it’s an Osgood Bradley).  The trucks on it were salvaged from... Queensboro Bridge car 601, which are somewhat close to what it had.  The material was gotten for below the floor for the brake system.

Center-entrance streetcar trailers were a brief fad and were really only built for about 10 years, from the mid-teens to the mid-1920s. Ten still exist, of which two are little better than frames and three more are stripped bodies. Thanks to the restoration work done on PSCT 4854, I'd say it has vaulted ahead of CSL 9020 and Denver Tramways 610 to qualify as the third most complete of the survivors. The only one of the group that's still 100% complete - for the moment, at least - is SLPS 426, which not coincidentally is the only one that was preserved more-or-less immediately upon retirement from passenger service. (You can read more about streetcar trailers here.)

EDIT #2: Bill has followed up with some photos of car 4584 taken within the past couple of weeks. They show the tremendous amount of work that has gone into rebuilding the car's interior, which was essentially "tunneled" during its years as a car body, including all-new bench seating and a recreated conductor's station. There's also a shot of the front end of the car - remember, this is a single-ended trailer with a door on one side only - showing the recently mounted Tomlinson coupler.

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?

The Iron Monster Hits the Rails

Many thanks to our friend Jeremy Whiteman, who sends along the photos below showing San Francisco Municipal Railway 162, one of the "iron monsters" preserved by Muni on home rails.

The good news is that after many years out of service, car 162 has started burn-in testing in preparation for reentering revenue service on the F Line. Car 162 has an unusual history: built by Jewett in 1914 to the "class B" design, it was retired in 1958 and acquired by the Orange Empire Trolley Museum (today the Southern California Railway Museum). That organization sold the car back to Muni in 2002, and after it returned home the following year it was fully restored to its end-of-service green-and-cream livery. It returned to active use in 2008. Unfortunately, in 2014 it was involved in an accident that bashed in the end of the car. Muni sent it out for rebuilding and it returned home in 2018, but for reasons that I'm not clear on, it hasn't been returned to operation until now. Its status on the PNAERC roster has been updated to "operated occasionally," and with luck, that will soon flip to "operated often."

Backdated Bullet

The news made it out on Facebook today that Red Arrow "Bullet" car 206 has just been cosmetically restored by the Electric City Trolley Museum. Its newly applied livery, shown here, reflects its 1960s-era appearance in the years before Red Arrow was incorporated into SEPTA. The car serves as the "gate guardian" outside the ECTM museum building in Scranton. Kudos to the crew at ECTM for a very nice paint job.

In many cases, paint jobs don't entail any changes to PNAERC except for perhaps some new photos. But here, I've made a few edits to car's 206 listing. Its owner was changed from SEPTA (until now, it has worn its end-of-service SEPTA colors) to PSTC, aka Red Arrow; and its description was changed as well. At the end of its life, car 206 was put into work service spreading "brine" on the third rail to melt ice, so it's been listed on PNAERC as a work car. Since it was never a PSTC work car, I've changed its classification to "rapid transit car" and updated its listing a bit to reflect that.

The Perkinsfield PCC is Back

A huge thank you goes out to contributor Daniel, who emailed to notify me of this Facebook post from about a year ago. The unusual thing about the car in the photo is that I took it off the PNAERC list two years ago because I assumed it had been scrapped. Whoops!

This is Toronto Transportation Commission 4524, a class A-8 PCC car built by St. Louis in 1951. It was withdrawn from service on May 18, 1990, and by 1991 it was one of four cars of this type (the others being 4529, 4530, and 4546) being held for possible rebuilding into 4600-series class A-15 cars. That rebuild program was curtailed in 1991, though, and when the 4600s were put up for sale in 1996, un-rebuilt car 4524 was put up for sale alongside them. Daniel sent me additional history that came from Robert Lubinski: car 4524 was sold on April 4, 1996, to Vintage Electric Streetcar Company (under whose ownership it was listed on PNAERC for many years, I'm afraid to say), but VESCO rejected it soon thereafter and it was never moved over the border. In August 1996 the car was sold to a person in Perkinsfield, Ontario, and was used for a restaurant as a time.

That was the last I knew of it; the trail ran cold around 2010, and I took it off the PNAERC list in 2023. But as it turns out, around that time - supposedly in late 2009 - it was sold to a private owner in Tecumseh, Ontario, near Windsor, and moved to his property. And there it remains, though as can be seen, it's in unenviable condition and doesn't seem to have received much in the way of upkeep. But it's on trucks, on a piece of track, and nominally on display, though only for the owner - it's only just barely visible from the road.

I've added car 4524 back to the PNAERC list and corrected the errors with its ownership history. Surprisingly, it's the last extant un-rebuilt 4500-series car; other than the 4600s that were rebuilt in the 1980s, there actually aren't that many PCCs left that were built for Toronto, at least not anymore. When 4600s and secondhand (ex-Kansas City, Cleveland, etc.) cars are discounted, I count a total of 11 preserved TTC PCCs, with only one of those - the last air car, TTC 4000 - in what I'd consider good condition.

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.

SEPTA PCC Scrapped

Thanks to Bill Wall, who passes along word that SEPTA 2104, the last Philadelphia PCC remaining at the Middletown & Hummelstown, was shipped to the scrapyard yesterday.

Car 2104 was a standard Philly postwar car built in 1948, overhauled in the 1980s GOH program, and sold to the M&H in 1994. Its loss is unfortunate, but not particularly significant; by my count, there are roughly 70 Philadelphia PCC cars in existence, in an astonishing variety of states, and that's not even counting cars purchased secondhand by the city.

The M&H is down to 12 cars on PNAERC. Eight of those are Lackawanna MU cars, which I assume are sticking around. Of the other four, three - KCPS steeplecab 2, BRT convertible 4550 and SBK box motor 9425 - are likely available to a good home. That leaves only Red Arrow 77, and the single-truck Rio open car that isn't on the PNAERC list, that the M&H intends to retain for the long term. The PNAERC list currently stands at 2,088 cars in all.

A New Home for Ottawa 696

Thanks to Sean Bowen and Jordan Helzer, who sent me this link to a Facebook post from the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in May. Ottawa 696, the oldest double-truck car from that city in preservation, has been moved to a new location. It has moved from its longtime home in an OC Transpo bus garage to the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smiths Falls, which is an organization new to PNAERC. RMEO has a small collection of steam-road equipment clustered around the town's rather impressive railway station, but car 696 is their first streetcar.

I don't have any insider information on car 696 or this transfer, but the photos posted of the move (including the one shown here) make it clear that the car's condition is similar to the photos on PNAERC taken back in 2018, suggesting that the major rebuilding project that was underway may have largely ground to a halt sometime back. As for the car's new home, RMEO does have a single-track barn, so my hope - especially given that the car doesn't have windows - is that car 696 is going in there and not remaining outside. The museum posted that there are no current plans for an operational restoration, but they do plan to complete restoration work on the car's body and possibly tow it around with a diesel.

Another question, since OC Transpo has divested itself of car 696, is what might happen to Ottawa 905, the other car owned by the city transit agency. While 1917-vintage car 696 is the oldest double-truck Ottawa car in preservation, 1933-vintage car 905 is the newest extant streetcar from the city. It was rescued out of a house in 2004 and has been stored in the same bus garage as 696 for some time, but it's a car body without any interior or running gear.

EDIT: Thanks to Bill Wall for sending along some additional background information. It seems that cars 696 and 905 were both moved to outdoor (tarped) storage at a city works yard in Cumberland, east of Ottawa, last year. That nixed any hope of restoration work on 696 continuing - until its move to Smiths Falls. I'm still not certain of what the plans for car 905 might be, or whether there are any.

The Spirit of 1776

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has rolled out their second striking, one-off PCC livery in as many years, this time in honor of the semiquincentennial. As shown above, Port Authority Transit 1799, a 1945 air-electric car, has been painted in a livery seen on the streets of Pittsburgh around the bicentennial in 1976. It's a striking color scheme that built off the then-current "banded" color layout used by PAT. The car was debuted today to much (literal) fanfare.

Now, there is an asterisk with this one. Unlike the "Terrible Trolley," this isn't really an accurate livery for this particular car. PAT did field a car with this exact livery, but it was (unsurprisingly) their car 1776, which did not survive into preservation. Car 1799 is identical; built as car 1613, it was overhauled in 1979 and received the number 1799 at that time. The original "Spirit of 1776" car began life as car 1616 and was overhauled in 1974, which is when it received the number 1776 and this livery.

But I don't think anyone's complaining. Car 1799 was saved by PTM to prevent it from being scrapped, but was in poor mechanical shape and had been considered "deaccessioned" by the museum for years. This new livery is quite the renaissance. I assume that 1799/"Spirit of 1776" is now considered part of the collection; although the car is not operational, at least not for now, it's certainly a striking display piece. I've updated its status from "storage" to "display." Kudos to everyone at PTM who made this happen!

Austin Birney Located

Thanks to Steve Baron for alerting me to a Facebook post from yesterday that brought to light a car I wasn't aware existed. Austin Street Railway 63 is the last surviving (as far as I know!) car from that city's system. It's always fun to find a previously unknown survivor.

This car is a Birney, obviously enough. According to Harold Cox's book on Birneys, Austin 63-65 were acquired secondhand from Southwestern Gas & Electric, the street railway in Texarkana, Arkansas. The date of their acquisition is uncertain, but the Texarkana system shut down in 1934, so that's as good a guess as any. Unfortunately, the Texarkana numbers of the three secondhand cars are unknown; that city had a total of 10 Birneys, of which four were built by American in 1919, two were built by Cincinnati in 1921, two more were built by American in 1923, and then there were two Brill-built cars purchased secondhand from Boston.

So now we get to the fun part: sleuthing by process of elimination. First, I suspect this isn't a Boston car, mainly because those cars had an unusual single marker over the center window. Then, as luck would have it, we have an in-service photo here that shows this exact car, number 63. You can tell from the photo that it's got a Brill 79E1 truck, which - according to builder's order lists, at least - rules out the two Cincinnati-built cars. Remarkably, the two orders Texarkana placed with American also had different types of trucks. The four cars built in 1919 had Brill 78M1F trucks, which differ noticeably from the 79E1 (a photo of one of the 1919 Texarkana cars with 78M1F trucks is here).

So, there we have it. My tentative conclusion is that this is a 1923 car, built by American on order #1354, and that its Texarkana number was either 28 or 29. I can't be absolutely certain - either owner of the car could have swapped trucks - but I'm comfortable enough to put that information down for car 63 on the PNAERC roster. Either way, it's a moderately significant car as Birneys go, given that it's the last survivor from both the Texarkana and Austin systems. It looks well taken care of at the moment, and hopefully that continues. The PNAERC list overall now stands at 2,089 cars.

WMATA 1000 makes an appearance

The first - though, I'm predicting, not the last - car on the PNAERC list to be repainted especially for the semiquincentennial, Washington Metro (WMATA) 1000 has shown up on the National Mall for display over the next couple of weeks according to this Facebook post. The car has been cosmetically restored to its as-built condition, at least from the looks of the photos, and really does look quite nice. It's being displayed alongside a mockup of the next generation of WMATA cars.

Car 1000, the very first Washington Metro car, was built by Rohr in 1974. It has been on the PNAERC list since 2019, but until now, I haven't been able to find a single photo of it. It, and the other cars in the WMATA historic fleet, have been securely stored deep in Greenbelt Yard in Maryland, and this is the first picture of any of these cars I've seen that was taken since they were marked for preservation. I'm not sure what the status is of car 1001, this car's mate, but hopefully it's still stored back at Greenbelt - and maybe even repainted along with car 1000.

News Roundup

Unusually enough, there's news today from a few different directions, and on a few different topics.

First off, thanks to Bill Wall for passing along the news that Seashore has again updated their "re-homing list."

Most of the cars on it are the same as the last edition, but there are three new additions that the museum has decided to deaccession. The first, pictured above in a photo taken way back in 1998, is Knoxville Power & Light 410. This is a single-truck curve-side car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and retired in 1939. It's a body, of course, and is in rough shape if the 28-year-old photo is any indication. This car is a bit odd in that it's simultaneously rare and, yet, not rare. There are only six Cincinnati curve-side cars in existence, however three of them are Knoxville single-truck bodies identical to car 410. And the other two are in much better condition than car 410: car 416 has been fully (albeit non-operationally) restored in its hometown, while car 419 is unrestored but preserved in solid condition at IRM as a body.

The other two additions to the re-homing list are true oddballs on the PNAERC list. They're both diminutive rail grinders built in 1913 by the Goldschmidt Thermit Company for the Boston Elevated Railway. Above is MBTA 0517, which has certainly seen better days.

And here's MBTA 3234 (both of these photos were taken within the past few months and were printed in the new re-homing list). I'll confess, I recall seeing these cars sitting off on a siding at Seashore for many years but not until now did I know which one was which! Anyway, there was a time that small, purpose-built rail grinders like this were not uncommon on street railways. They're exceedingly rare now, though; my best guess is that they were just exceedingly uninteresting to the fans running the trolley museums back in the 1950s. Most surviving rail grinders were rebuilt from streetcars or, at the very least, had interesting car bodies. Besides these two, I think the only rail grinder of this general outline on the PNAERC list is the Kerwin-built example preserved in Mexico City.

There are now a total of 34 cars at Seashore on the PNAERC roster that have been deaccessioned, offered to other organizations, or designated for disposal. That's about 18% of their traction collection.

And now, let's proceed a few miles to the southwest and visit another one of the "three sisters," the Connecticut Trolley Museum.

The news from CTM is the precise opposite of the news from Seashore: in this case, a car is being re-accessioned. The car in question is Long Island Rail Road 4153, an MP54A1 commuter car built by AC&F in 1930. Way back in 2018, CTM deaccessioned this car and made it available to other organizations. It hasn't found a taker. However, the museum has now elected to retain it for their historic collection after all. This is good from an historical standpoint because there are very few MP54's still remaining in anything resembling original condition; in fact, I'd say there are only two, this car and sister car 1149 in Syracuse (and I don't know how complete that car is). I'm also pretty sure 4153 is the most recent MP54 to operate, as it did run at CTM during the 1970s, and maybe more recently. Many thanks to [correction!] Andy Borst of CTM for letting me know about 4153's status change.

And finally, a few more miles to the southwest, some disconcerting news comes tonight from our friends at the Rockhill Trolley Museum. They've announced on their Facebook page (full text of the announcement is below, for the record) that they have lost the use of their railroad except on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons. The other four days of the week, and the mornings of these three days, their line has been requisitioned by the East Broad Top for use by a railbike operation.

The EBT has always owned the land under RTM's railroad, but for some 60 years the two organizations have operated side-by-side in what has seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement. I'm not sure exactly what to extrapolate from this news, but I hope that the EBT finds somewhere else to put their railbikes and that they return to the past state of equilibrium with the trolley museum.

Announcement text:

Rockhill Trolley Museum would like to extend a sincere apology to our valued visitors for an upcoming change to our operating schedule.

Beginning July 1, 2026, East Broad Top Railroad will be operating standard-gauge rail bikes on our trolley line Monday through Thursday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and Friday through Sunday from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM.

Due to the change being out of our control, we are required to limit trolley rides to Friday through Sunday with departures at: 12:45 PM, 2:00 PM, 3:15 PM, and 4:30 PM. Museum store hours are being finalized and will be announced as soon as they are updated.

Purchasing trolley tickets can still be done in our museum store or online at rockhilltrolley.org and are valid for unlimited rides on the date they are redeemed. Please note our tickets are no longer available through East Broad Top Railroad at the station or online.

We understand schedule changes can be disappointing, and we sincerely regret any inconveniences. Your continued support is greatly appreciated as our volunteers continue to provide a welcoming and educational visitor experience. We look forward to seeing you this season!

South Shore 32 Scrapped

In a post today on the Ahead of the Torch Facebook group, it was confirmed that Seashore has scrapped South Shore interurban car 32. This is no great loss; of the 40 coaches operated by the CSS&SB between the 1920s and the early 1980s, no fewer than 27 - a full two-thirds - are still in existence, including "flanking" cars 30, 31, 33, and 34. This particular car was in particularly bad condition because its frame was damaged during transportation to Maine. It was deaccessioned by Seashore in 2022 but found no takers; Seashore coordinated with East Troy volunteers to allow that museum to harvest some parts off the car this spring. The Seashore collection, at least on the PNAERC roster, is now down to 185 cars, and the overall roster stands at 2,088 pieces.

Postcard from Canada

I owe a big thank you to our official researcher, Wesley Paulson, who just returned from a visit to the Halton County Radial Railway in Canada and sent several updates and photos to help fill out and update the PNAERC list.

Wesley was able to nab some photos of cars at HCRY that are pictured on the PNAERC roster, but whose images are either poor or outdated. Above is TTC C1, a 1911 derrick, which has deftly evaded most photographers visiting the museum. The only photo I had of this car dated to (I think?) the 1990s.

This single-truck rail grinder, TTC RT7, was rebuilt from a Toronto Civic Railway streetcar. I didn't have any decent photos at all of this car, though that's understandable given that it's not on public display.

Every museum has one or two cars that were disassembled, either in part or in full, for a restoration project that then stalled. TTC 1704, shown here, is awaiting a future restart of a major rebuilding. This car is identical to TTC 1706 at Branford.

Wesley also got some mechanical information I was missing. And above is an "oops," though it's not immediately obvious. TTC 4089 is part of the TTC's historic fleet, all of which are currently stored at HCRY while their carbarn is rebuilt. It's a standard CLRV built in 1979. The "oops" is that until now, it's been listed on the PNAERC list not as 4089 but as 4081. That's been corrected now, though.

Another update was that TTC 4024, a CLRV also built in 1979 and pictured above in 2022, was scrapped last year. This is no particular loss; it was acquired from TTC in 2020 as a parts source. It's now been removed from the PNAERC list, leaving an even dozen CLRVs on the list in addition to two articulated ALRVs.

Finally, speaking of ALRVs, TTC 4207 is part of the TTC historic fleet that's now at HCRY, but until now I hadn't noted it as being at Halton County. That's now been corrected. Thanks again to Wesley for all this helpful information!

Long Island MP54 Scrapped

News comes from Facebook today that Long Island Rail Road 4137, shown above in 2016, has been scrapped at the Seashore Trolley Museum. A lot of equipment was salvaged from the car to benefit cars at other museums, including seats and electrical parts that will go to New Haven "Washboard" MU combines preserved in Danbury.

Photo posted 5/28/2026 on Ahead of the Torch

Car 4137 was an MP-54A1 third-rail commuter coach built by AC&F in 1930 as LIRR 1137. It was retired in 1972 and sold to Seashore, so it's been in Kennebunkport for longer than it was in service. The car never ran at Seashore, though, and over the past decade or two its condition had deteriorated markedly. It was offered to other organizations for preservation back in 2022 but found no takers.

This reduces the number of LIRR cars on the PNAERC list to four, but of those, one is a "tunneled" static display piece and a second has been deaccessioned by its owner. The only LIRR MP-54 that seems to be in solid condition is car 1149, on display at the fairgrounds in Syracuse. (There's also unusual double-deck trailer 200, preserved on Long Island.) MP-54s have not fared well in preservation; they seem particularly prone to rusting out, and their size and unsuitability for operation has meant they've rarely found homes except as "stripped" coaches on tourist railroads. There are 12 MP-54s on the PNAERC list when ex-PRR examples are included, but besides the three LIRR examples listed above, three are hulks due to be scrapped, five have been stripped of their electrical equipment and turned into tourist railroad coaches, and the remaining car is stored outdoors in rough shape.

Seashore's collection on the PNAERC list is now 186 pieces, and there are 2,090 cars on the list in total.

Even More 'L' Cars

We'll forgive you if you're getting a bit of 'L' car fatigue, but I've been notified that another pair of Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit cars has been preserved. This time it's CTA 2401 and 2402, the first pair of 2400-series cars built by Boeing-Vertol in 1976. They're shown above in an October 1976 photo from here. Unfortunately, I can't find any recent photos of them, nor is there any information about them online other than a statement on the CTA's heritage fleet page about having an eight-car train of 2400s. These cars are generally identical to the other six 2400s kept by the CTA for preservation except that they were part of a subset of these cars that were rebuilt in 1995 for use pulling work equipment such as flat cars. Their grids and control groups were beefed up, they had sockets added for jumpers, and they acquired red-and-white strips in place of the more typical red/white/blue stripes, but those were about the only modifications. Of the 10 cars of this type on the PNAERC roster, these are the only two that received work-motor modifications. This increases the CTA historic fleet to 18 cars: eight 2400s, four 2200s, four 6000s, and two 4000s.