First Portland LRV Preserved

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for forwarding along this link announcing that TriMet (MAX) 101, the first light rail vehicle built for the Portland light rail system, has been moved to the Oregon Electric Railway Museum for preservation. The image above is a screen grab from the video posted on the museum's Facebook page.

Car 101 was built by Bombardier in 1983, making it the first Bombardier-built LRV in preservation. It underwent some testing in Pueblo, Colorado, in late 1983 before delivery to Portland the following year and entry into service in 1986. The Portland light rail system was the third modern system of its type to open in the US, following San Diego in 1981 and Buffalo (which was intended to be a heavy-rail subway but morphed into a hybrid light rail system when funding ran short) in 1984.

I've also added a new top-level "car type" classification to the PNAERC list. Until now, I've been classifying LRVs as rapid transit cars, but I've just created a new "light rail vehicle" classification. There are now 14 LRVs on the list, including seven San Diego U2 cars, four 1970s-era Boeing SLRVs, and three one-offs, including TriMet 101. OERHS also joins Western Railway Museum and Southern California Railway Museum as the only organizations to roster LRVs of multiple types, though WRM still leads the way with three different types of LRV (and from three different systems, no less).

CTA Budds Back from the Dead

The CTA has been maintaining an historic fleet for about a decade or so now, and it has recently comprised one pair of 1920s-era Cincinnati-built 4000s, two pairs of 1950s-era St. Louis-built 6000s, one pair of 1969 Budd-built 2200s, and three pairs of 1970s-era Boeing-built 2400s. But a second pair of 2200s is now back from the dead! Married-pair cars 2231 and 2232 have been retrieved from Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, where they were shipped in 2012 following retirement for use in training, and have returned to Chicago. The news was reported here, along with the above photo, courtesy of LaQuan Miller.

That brings the size of the CTA historic fleet up to 16 cars. That's far smaller than the New York historic fleet, of course, but it's enough to represent every major class of 'L' car used in Chicago since the dawn of the steel car era - no minor feat.

Atlanta Car Added to List

Thanks again go to Nate Wells, who has sent along information and photos that allow me to add another car to the PNAERC list.

The car in question, shown here in photos taken last fall, is Georgia Power Company 903. It's a typical Atlanta 900-series car essentially identical to car 948, restored and operating today at Branford. For its part, car 903 was built in 1926 at almost exactly the same time as car 948. It's been kept under a roof for many decades, meaning the body actually looks like it's in decent shape except for an area near one end where the roof failed. It even appears to still wear its original paint (in fact some vestiges of its as-built livery, including pin-striping and "front entrance" lettering on the car side, are in evidence even though they were painted over later in the car's service career).

These photos were taken in car 903's longtime home in Georgia, but it was recently purchased by a collector near Montgomery, Alabama, and moved there. I can only hope it's being stored inside. Any additional information, including mechanical/electrical equipment (was the 900-939 series equipped identically to the 940-999 series?) and any plans the new owner might have for the car, would be appreciated. This is the seventh Georgia Power car on the PNAERC list, and overall the list now has a total of 2,086 cars.

Charlotte Trolleys

A huge thank you goes out to Nate Wells, who provided me with some updates on electric car preservation in North Carolina. The first update involves Carolina Power & Light 117, a longer-than-typical Birney built by Brill in 1927 for the Asheville system. This car was owned by Charlotte Trolley, and in fact was the last car on the PNAERC roster still listed under Charlotte Trolley ownership. But Nate reports that the car has, in fact, been acquired by the owner of the Savona Mill in northwest Charlotte. This is an historic mill complex that is being redeveloped as office and commercial space.

The more surprising update, at least for me, is that the two Charleston center-entrance car bodies have resurfaced! These are unusual cars built by Cincinnati in 1918 for wartime service in Charleston (there's a whole article about them in a July 1918 issue of Electric Railway Journal). There were two orders, one for trailers numbered 301-310 and one for motors numbered 311-316, and I believe both of these cars are trailers. One car is numbered 302 and the second is thought to be numbered 306 but I'm not positive of that.

Regardless, the cars were exhumed from a house back in 2006 and then spent a few years stored outdoors in Charleston before vanishing. I removed car 302 (at the time I hadn't included the second car on the list) from PNAERC back in 2021. Well, it turns out these two were bought by the Savona Mill owner and moved to Charlotte way back in 2013 as described here. They were briefly stored indoors but have been stored outside since 2015; the above photo is from this article. Google Street View shows them stored at the corner of Turner and Coxe, in steadily deteriorating condition, until about 2021 or 2022, when they were moved to (what I believe is) their current location behind a building at the southwest corner of Chamberlain and Gardner. Aerial photos suggest both cars' roofs have disintegrated, but the cars still exist and they've apparently been moved into a storage building within the last year, so they're back on the PNAERC list.

Just as a final note, I'll point out that it's a bit of a milestone to no longer have Charlotte Trolley on the PNAERC list as an owner, even though this is a bit overdue - from what I can tell, the organization was largely defunct by about 2017. But during the 1990s and early 2000s, it was quite a going concern, and played a big role in raising the profile of streetcars and light rail in Charlotte during that period. I recall visiting their barn in 2001, at which time they had car 85 in service (using a towed generator), Birney 25 on hand and purportedly under restoration, the aforementioned car 117 in storage, Red Arrow 13 being repainted, and a car from Greece on hand in good repair. But like Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson, Charlotte Trolley was arguably a victim of its own success in publicizing electric traction, and they lost their right-of-way to a new light rail system. Unlike OPT, they disbanded as an organization, but fortunately their collection is faring well elsewhere.

New Technology at NYTM

Thanks to Edrick Ang for news that New York City Transit Authority 3007, shown above, was moved to the New York Transit Museum today. Thanks also to James McGinty, who posted this photo on Facebook. The car has apparently been spruced up and made presentable for display as an historic artifact. As such, I've added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 3007 is pretty unusual. It's one of nine R110B type cars built in 1992 for the IND/BMT side of the New York subway system as part of the "New Technology" test program. These cars (and 10 type R110A cars built for the IRT side of the system at the same time) were intended from the start as prototypes, not production cars, and they spent less than a decade in service. The last of the R110B cars were withdrawn from service in 2000, but at least some have simply been stored since then. The R110B cars were permanently arranged into three-car trains, motor-trailer-motor, and car 3007 is one of the motor cars. It has relatively early AC traction motors and chopper control. Quite a bit more information on these cars can be found here.

The PNAERC list now includes 2,091 cars in all.

Columbus Spaghetti Restaurant Car Added to List

News appeared online today that the streetcar body in the defunct Columbus, Ohio, Spaghetti Warehouse has been saved for preservation by a local historical organization. The car is shown above, in a photo from here taken today, after removal from the building where it had resided since 1978. Since the car is now owned by a museum, and since I have narrowed its likely origins down to a specific series of five cars, I figure I've got enough to add it to the PNAERC list. So, here it is.

I'm reasonably sure that this is one of five cars built by American in 1922 for the Texas Interurban Railway in their 100-104 series. TIRy was an unusual system; among the last new electric interurban lines built in the country, it had lines from Dallas to Denton and Terrell that opened in 1923. The system closed in 1932, after which its lightweight cars were sold to Dallas Railway & Terminal for city service. This quintet ran as DR&T 111-115 until sometime in the mid-1950s. This car, the only ex-TIRy car preserved, was rebuilt by Spaghetti Warehouse around 1977 and has been a centerpiece on the Columbus restaurant since then.

Its new owner, the Rickenbacker Woods Foundation, is a new addition to PNAERC and a bit of an anomaly. It seems to be part museum, part community group, with a significant educational component. It's based around the boyhood home of World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker and also focuses on Granville T. Woods, an inventor who lived in Columbus during the late 1800s and, among other things, invented early devices for third-rail electric railway use. It appears that RWF is hoping to construct a park adjacent to their site and make this streetcar body a feature of the park.

Silverliner Preserved

When interurban fans think of Silverliners, they're picturing this beauty and its ilk. But the Silverliner that's the subject of today's post is a bit more homely, albeit also significantly higher capacity, at least when it comes to seating.

The Reading Company Technical & Historical Society has announced on Facebook that Reading 9001, a "Silverliner II" electric commuter coach, has been acquired for preservation from SEPTA. The car was built by Budd in 1963 using grant money and was in service until 2012. Apparently, SEPTA has been holding onto it for about a dozen years for the purpose of preservation, but finally put it up for sale - and the RCT&HS purchased it. Since 2019, the car has been stored at Frazer, as shown above, but the plan is to move it shortly to the society's site in Hamburg. It's now been added to the PNAERC list.

Car 9001 is a behemoth, at 85' long, roughly 101,000 lbs., and seating 124 people. It began life with mercury arc rectifiers but these were later changed to silicon diode rectifiers. It also has a late-1980s vintage transformer that replaced its original PCB model. While far from the newest heavy rail commuter EMU car preserved - the ex-IC Highliners and the handful of preserved "Metropolitan" type cars from the New York era date to the early 1970s - car 9001 does have the distinction of being the most modern car from the Philadelphia area currently on the PNAERC list. For now, it's still listed under SEPTA ownership, but it will be moved over to RCT&HS ownership as soon as it rolls into Hamburg. Many thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for alerting me to this one!

A Mystery in Chester - UPDATED

Many thanks to Joe Sharretts, who sent along the above photo taken this week in Chester, Pennsylvania. Joe was checking out the ruins of a church and, noticing this sitting behind it, astutely observed that it looked quite a bit like a streetcar. And sure enough, it is: a little digging revealed that the Chester Historic Preservation Committee claims a 1916 Brill streetcar among their holdings. CHPC is the owner of the church ruins, so I think it's safe to say that this is the car in question.

Unfortunately, "1916 Brill" doesn't narrow it down much - not without getting an actual view of the car body, anyway. Beyond the fact that it's about 40' long and is clearly an arch-roof car, there's not much to go on. I've reached out to CHPC but haven't received a response yet. Judging from Google Street View, this car has been at its current location for something like 10 years. Anyone know the history behind the car?

UPDATE: A huge thank you to Wesley Paulson, who with the help of Matt Nawn was able to track down some history on this car. As previously indicated, it was built in 1916 by Brill. The owner was the Wilmington & Philadelphia Traction, later Delaware Electric Power Co., the street railway system in Wilmington. W&PT also owned Southern Penn, which ran cars through Chester, though there's uncertainty as to whether this specific car ever ran in Chester.

Anyway, it was in W&PT's 301-331 series. There's a builder's photo here, a photo of a car in this series following modernization here, and a "late career" photo of one of these cars here. This car is pretty significant because the Wilmington system was exemplified by cars (like this) with absurdly low-hung platforms. This car, for example, doesn't seem to have had any steps - the platforms are so low to the ground, it looks like passengers just stepped right in. This gave Wilmington cars an unusual appearance at best, but as they got progressively more rebuilt, they also got significantly more homely. Anyway, the only other preserved Wilmington car is single-trucker 120, which is decidedly nonstandard for that system's fleet, making this newly discovered body unique in preservation. I've added this car to the PNAERC list, but I'm also leaving it as a "mystery car" until we can figure out its fleet number.

The Fourth AEM-7

A brand-new preservation organization announced today that they've acquired Amtrak 927, an AEM-7 electric locomotive built in 1981 by Electro-Motive. This is the fourth AEM-7 to be preserved and the second example that was rebuilt by Amtrak with AC propulsion equipment and traction motors. Number 927 has obviously lost a few parts, but is assumed to be essentially complete, judging from the above photo from today's announcement. The locomotive has been sitting for quite a few years in the dead line, recently in Davisville, Rhode Island, and was supposedly next in line to meet the torch when its now-owners stepped in.

So, what is this organization? It's called Northeast Rail Heritage Inc., and depending on which of their pages you look at, they were founded in either 2023 or 2024 (they are described as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so perhaps the group was created in 2023 and gained nonprofit status this year?). Their website is nicely done but limited in scope, and other than general information about the significance of  the AEM-7, it mostly consists of board member bios. Amtrak 927 is their first acquisition; since they don't seem to have a museum site at the moment, I've set their location in PNAERC as the location of their rolling stock collection: Davisville, RI.

As a point of obscure trivia, among mainline electric locomotives, the AEM-7 is now second only to the GG-1 in terms of how many have been preserved. It has passed up the S-motor, "Little Joe," and Ferrocarril Mexicano boxcab types, all of which can boast of three preserved examples apiece.

Linear Induction Motor Cars Preserved

A post on the Transit Toronto Facebook page here has revealed that two cars from Toronto's Scarborough RT rapid transit line, which closed in 2023, have found their way to the Halton County Radial Railway. The cars are TTC 3026 and TTC 3027, a married-pair set of "people mover"-type automated cars built in 1986 by UTDC. Not only were these cars built for automated, or driverless, operation, but they were built to use linear induction motors. As such, they don't have normal traction motors geared to the axles, but they still have electric motors that move them along the track. There's one other car of this general type (actually, a nearly identical car built by UTDC in 1982 for Vancouver) on the PNAERC list, described here when I added it to the list a year or so ago.

As for cars 3026 and 3027, they're standard gauge, which means they can't roll on Halton County's track. For the moment, they're stored on panel track in the maintenance building. Supposedly, one will be preserved and the other will be disposed of, though I'm not sure which. With these two cars added, Halton County's up to 56 cars listed on PNAERC, while the entire list stands at 2,089 cars.

I was able to find more information about these cars (albeit from Wikipedia) than I was on the Vancouver car that's on the list, but I could still use more information. Technical details are always appreciated.

Denver Peter Witt Saved

It's getting less common for the big trolley museums to add car bodies "found in the wild" to their collections, but smaller museums and individual collectors are picking up the slack. Earlier this week, an individual in Cheyenne, Wyoming, who operates a contract restoration business under the name High Plains Railroad Preservation, acquired and moved Denver Tramways 842. The car, shown above en route to its new home, is a single-ended Peter Witt built in the DT shops in 1924. As far as I can tell, after it was retired at the end of the streetcar era in Denver, it was made into a cabin near Fort Collins, Colorado. There it sat until this week. It's now the most modern of the nine streetcars from Denver on the PNAERC list, even though its construction appears to be entirely of wood with just steel sheathing - not exactly cutting-edge for 1924! It's clearly in rough shape, but HPRP has recently completed a stunning cosmetic restoration of Denver Tramways .04 - owned by the City of Arvada, but for the moment listed on PNAERC under HPRP because that's its physical location - so a bright future for car 842 isn't particularly unlikely. The PNAERC list now stands at a total of 2,087 cars.

Three of a Kind

Thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for alerting me to this post from the Western Railway Museum a few days ago. Their third BART cars has arrived! Following the arrival of an "A2" car in August and a "B2" car in September, they've now acquired "C1" car number 329. This car has led a less eventful existence than the other two, never having been renumbered or rebuilt, and is the only one of the trio to retain its as-built DC motors. It was built by Alstom in 1987 as a flat-end motor car, a way for BART to adopt a fleet more adaptable to changing needs for train lengths when compared with the original fleet, which consisted entirely of blind motors and "end cars" that couldn't easily be run mid-train.

This likely completes BART's presence on the PNAERC roster, at least for a while. I don't believe the system has retained any of its own first-generation cars for historic purposes, and certainly none of the giant 5'6"-gauge cars have gone to any other museums. With this arrival, WRM has a total of 69 cars on the PNAERC list, with 2,088 cars on the list in all.

A Streetcar from the Magnolia State - Updated

Thanks to Bill Wall for alerting me to this article from late August that describes an exciting development. The last (known) surviving Vicksburg, Mississippi, streetcar, which was discovered four years ago as reported right here, has now officially been preserved at a museum. The car body has been restored, as shown above, and moved to The Old Depot Museum, which is the local history museum and happens to be located in the old railroad depot.

Kudos to the folks in Vicksburg who turned this from just another "streetcar body found in a house and then shoved into storage somewhere" into a rather attractive display piece. Unfortunately, I still don't know anything about the car! I haven't managed to dig up any Vicksburg rosters. They apparently numbered their cars by tens, so builder records suggest that cars 75, 105, 115, 125, and 135 were all built by St. Louis Car Company between 1913 and 1916. Cars 145, 155, 165, and 175 were Birneys bought secondhand, and this car definitely isn't a Birney, so my guess is that it's in the 75-135 series. But I don't know what happened to numbers 85 and 95, so I can't even say with confidence that this is a SLCC product.

Nevertheless, even with as little information as I have, the car is certainly preserved and displayed, so I should add it to the PNAERC list. It's been added and is now the only car on the list to hail from the Magnolia State (though this car is preserved in Mississippi, it's from over the border in Memphis). If anyone happens upon a photo, roster, or any other information that might shed some light on the single-truck pre-Birney cars used in Vicksburg, please drop me a line.

And with that, I think I'm down to just four states that aren't represented by cars preserved on the list: Alaska, Hawaii, New Mexico, and South Dakota. Don't confuse that with states where cars are preserved; I mean that I don't think there are any cars on the list that ran in those states in regular service. I'd say 46 out of 50 ain't bad. As for states where cars are currently preserved, I think we're at 47/50, missing only Hawaii, New Mexico, and Vermont.

UPDATE: Photos taken in October 2024 by Murphy Zane Jenkins-Henson have been posted on Facebook here, though I'm not sure whether that link will work. I've reproduced a couple of the photos below. They show the Vicksburg car on display under a substantial shelter next to The Old Depot Museum.

SECOND UPDATE: I was able to obtain builder's photos of Vicksburg cars 75, 115, and 135 from Washington University, which holds the surviving St. Louis Car Company records. And (drumroll) ...none of them look anything like the preserved body! They're all eight-window cars, whereas the preserved car is a six-window car. More noticeably, they have doors at all four corners, suggesting they were not delivered as one-man cars. The preserved car may have been rebuilt, but it looks to my eye like it was built new with doors only at two corners. Is it possible that the preserved car was delivered after the city's Birneys, maybe numbered 185 or 195?

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

The Western Railway Museum is acquiring three Bay Area Rapid Transit cars from the system's just-retired "legacy" fleet, and the second of these three cars arrived yesterday. BART 1834 has a pretty interesting history. It's a "B2" class car, and the "B" indicates that it's a blind motor (aka, no cab) while the "2" indicates that it was rebuilt around 2000 with IGBT inverter control and AC motors. However, that was its second rebuilding - when it was new, it was "A" car 120 and was the same type as BART 1164 (then numbered 164), already preserved at WRM. It was rebuilt without its cab sometime around 1980, I think. The car's most unique claim to fame, though, is that in September 1972, it was ridden by President Richard Nixon. So, there you go.

The above photo of car 1834 leaving San Francisco comes from a post on WRM's Facebook page, and it appears that the car has now been placed on display indoors at the museum, coupled to car 1164. It's been added to the PNAERC list but I'm still looking for more information, primarily rebuild dates - both for when it went from an A car to a B car and for when it went from a B to a B2 car.

I believe car 1834 is only the second blind motor on the PNAERC list, after PATH 143, and the first to be preserved with a matching cab car. This acquisition brings the size of WRM's fleet on PNAERC to 68 cars (just six shy of SCRM!) and brings the overall PNARC list to 2,086 cars.

BART Comes to Rio Vista

The Western Railway Museum is growing its collection again, and this time, it's acquired one of the most distinctive and unusual pieces of electric railway equipment in preservation.

Today saw the arrival in Rio Vista of Bay Area Rapid Transit 1164, the first BART car to enter preservation (or, at least, enter private preservation - I'm not certain whether BART has formally set aside any of its own first-generation fleet for historic reasons). Car 1164 is an "A2" car that started life as an "A" car, one of the unmistakable shovel-nosed, single-window giants so closely associated with the BART system. It's a Rohr car that bears some similarity to the 1000-series WMATA subway cars already on the PNAERC list, but of course it's the first piece of equipment on the list that's 5'6" gauge and also the first piece designed for 1000vDC traction power. A 2002 rebuilding (hence the "2" in "A2") saw its original DC motors and chopper control replaced with AC equipment.

This particular car was used as a testing car on the Hayward Test Track for a time, which gives it a unique history. WRM posted on their Facebook page about the move, which is where the above photos came from. They included a shot of the car already on display in the Jensen Car House, where the museum has laid some dual-gauge track, though they used standard-gauge "dollies" to switch the car around. They're also planning to acquire a "B" car and a "C" car in the near future to represent all the major types of first-generation BART rolling stock. Kudos to them for accomplishing a preservation project with, shall we say, some unique challenges!

WMATA Additions

For a few years now, it's been suggested that more than just two Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) cars had been set aside for preservation by that system. The first two, from the system's original 1000-series order for cars, I knew about; but the 4000- and 5000-series had also been retired and, supposedly, the first pair from each series had been retained. However, evidence of this that I could find consisted of less-than-dependable sources - mostly random forum posts and Wikipedia. But, that's now changed! I found this WMATA fleet management plan from 2021 online.

Between that document and this 2021 Greenbelt Yard inspection form, which confirms car numbers, I can confidently add four more WMATA cars to the PNAERC list. Cars 4000 and 4001 were built in 1991 by Breda, and are the first cars on the PNAERC list to have been built by that company. As near as I can tell, they never went through a major overhaul like the 1000-series cars did and were the last cars on the system with DC traction motors. They were retired in 2017. Cars 5000 and 5001 were built a decade later, in 2001, and ran for just 17 years before retirement in 2018. These were the first cars built new for WMATA with AC traction motors, and like the 4000-series cars, went until retirement without a heavy overhaul. They're the first cars on the PNAERC list built by Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, better known as CAF, which worked with a local firm called AAI Corporation to built and assemble them. They are now the newest cars on the PNAERC list, beating out NJT 4424 by a full five years.

This brings the WMATA historic fleet on PNAERC to six cars and brings the total size of the list up to 2,094 cars. But wait, there's more! WMATA announced just a couple of months ago that it is retiring its 2000-series cars, which were built in the early 1980s by Breda and overhauled in the early 2000s, and saving a pair. The fleet management plan linked earlier also suggests that the system plans to keep the first two cars of each order, suggesting cars 2000 and 2001 have been - or will be - set aside. Can anyone confirm that these two cars are indeed in the plan and whether or not they've already been put out to pasture at Greenbelt Yard? (By the way, post-retirement photos of any of the WMATA historic cars would be very much appreciated; I haven't found a decent photo of a single one of them since retirement. The photo at the top of this post is a random in-service shot I found online.)

Answers and More Questions

A few years ago, in this post, I asked for information on a streetcar that had gone "missing" in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Today, thanks to Bill Wall, who alerted me to this video, I've got one answer - but a few more questions.

The images here are screen grabs from that video. At about the 11:00 mark, the streetcar pictured above shows up. This appears to be car 15 from my previous post, the single-trucker owned by the Negaunee Historical Society and said to have been moved from a site in town out to the Tracy Mine back in 2014. These are the best images I've seen of the car, and show that it appears largely solid but has doors cut into the centers of both ends. It looks a lot like a Brill-design car; one clue is the "barrel" shaped interior posts shown below. Single-truckers of this design (often built by American Car Company) were extremely common on small-town street railway systems in the Midwest. Very few are left, with Grand Forks 102 being a rare surviving example.

The Negaunee Historical Society claims that this car ran in Negaunee on the Marquette County Gas Light & Traction line to Ishpeming. However, having looked into it a bit, I'm dubious. The only information I have on MCGL&T comes from CERA Bulletin 103, and that says that the line "graduated to double-truckers" in 1907, buying two Jewetts and a Niles. That suggests that the line's earlier single-truckers may not have lasted too late, though it's not really clear.

On the other hand, the same book shows images of Brill-design deck-roof single-truckers running in nearby Marquette that match car 15 exactly. Spotting features include seven windows per side plus a narrow window next to each bulkhead; blocked-off left side doors; and, perhaps most unusually, a very odd rub rail arrangement where the rub rail only extends a couple of feet in from each end of the body before ending. Furthermore, American Car Company records show five cars numbered 16-21 built in 1903 for the Marquette City & Presque Isle, the system in Marquette. This doesn't tell me who built car 15, which doesn't show up in any builder order lists I have, but it matches the number series.

As such, I've decided that car 15 in Negaunee is almost certainly from the Marquette & Presque Isle. It's annoying that it doesn't show up in any of my builder order lists; my best guess is that it was bought secondhand or sold to a broker who then sold it to the MC&PI. Perhaps it was built by Stephenson, for which I don't have an order list, though they weren't bought by Brill until 1904. If anyone happens upon a MC&PI roster, please let me know! In the meantime, I've added the car to the PNAERC list here. It's not the only car on the list whose builder is unknown, but I hope to gather more information on this intriguing car as time goes on.

AEM7 Arrives in Danbury

It seems the Danbury Railway Museum's collection of mainline electric collection is growing again. According to this video (source of the screen shot above), Amtrak 917, an AEM7 built by Electro-Motive in 1981, has been moved to the DRM property from its former storage location at a shipping terminal in Rhode Island.* This makes 917 the third AEM7 preserved, after 915 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and 945 at the Illinois Railway Museum. Of the three, it is the only example that was upgraded to AC traction around 2000 or so; the other two retain their original DC motors. This addition puts the list at 2,089 pieces of equipment.

As I wrote here, DRM is now in the same league as IRM and RRMofPA - not coincidentally, the other two owners of AEM7s - when it comes to its mainline electric collection. DRM now has 11 pieces of mainline electric equipment, compared with nine at RRMofPA and 11 at IRM. DRM might not have a locomotive of such national significance as Strasburg's DD1, or a crowd pleaser quite like the operable South Shore 803 in Union, but Danbury's collection includes unique pieces like the Grand Central Terminal wrecker, the last NYC T-Motor, and all three surviving New Haven "washboard" MU cars. Now, all they need is a GG1!

*EDIT: It appears that the AEM7 actually arrived in Danbury on June 7th.

Car 54, There You Are

Back about three years ago, in this post, I described removing several cars from the PNAERC list that had simply gone missing. Without any recent news, I presumed that the cars - most of which had been in private hands - were gone. I'm happy to say that the very first one on that list has now turned up intact!

Kansas City Clay County & St. Joseph 54 is a rather unusual all-steel box motor, one of only two cars still in existence from that line and the only box motor. It's shown above in a photo taken, and posted on Facebook, about two weeks ago by Mr. Bob Matthys of Camden Point, Missouri. Mr. Matthys is apparently the new owner of car 54; judging from the photos, the car had been abandoned derelict in a grove of trees on a farm, but Mr. Matthys purchased the car, cleared the trees as shown below, and hauled it off the farm.

I'm not sure what the long-term plans for car 54 are, but it appears to be on a substantial trailer and not in immediate danger of dissolving. I believe this car has the same construction as the KCCC&StJ's passenger cars, which means it has a steel roof, which has presumably helped it. With luck, perhaps it will be fixed up for display on its home territory. Thanks to Johnny Myers for making me aware of this.

If You Knew What the New MU Knew

Many thanks to Tom Morrow, who sent along some photos taken back in the 1980s that have allowed me to add two more cars to the PNAERC list.

These photos were taken by the late Harvey Hylton in the mid- or late-1980s at a tourist railroad then known as the Indiana & Ohio, today the Lebanon Mason & Monroe, in southern Ohio. The LM&M has, for many years, owned a quartet of ex-Lackawanna MU motor cars. They've numbered the cars 101-104 but until now I only knew the original number of one other, 4615, so that was the only car included on PNAERC. But now, thanks to Harvey and Tom, I can add two more! MU motor cars 3514 and 4634 are now on the list, meaning I'm only "missing" one of the LM&M cars. Any information on that fourth car - and, crucially, any information that might indicate which Lackawanna cars were renumbered to which LM&M cars - would be greatly appreciated.