Equipment Moving Home

Equipment is moving! The higher-profile equipment move involved New York Central 100, the first S-motor, and New York Central 278, the last T-motor. These two arrived at their new home in Danbury, Connecticut, yesterday (January 2nd) and were unloaded today. The photos above and below come from the Railfan & Railroad Facebook page.

The T-motor was placed back on its trucks, but the S-motor was deposited on a flatcar. Photos suggest that the S-motor took some serious damage to both its body and underframe while being extracted from its longtime home in Glenmont, New York, so that may have something to do with it. It looks like the T-motor mercifully fared better.

And at the other end of the country, the Arizona Street Railway Museum / Phoenix Trolley Museum has managed to extract two of their Phoenix Street Railway city cars, PSR 504 and PSR 116, from a building on the south side of downtown Phoenix. The two cars had been stored there since the museum was evicted from its longtime home at Deck Park at the end of 2017, but they're now at the museum's new home along Grand Avenue northwest of downtown. The above photo is from the museum's Facebook page and shows (L-R) car 504, car 116, and car 509, which was rescued in 2020 and still more house than streetcar. The last time three Phoenix city cars were seen together was probably 1948. All of the equipment in this post - NYC 100 and 278, and the three Phoenix cars - have had any "stored off-site" notations removed.

What once was lost now is found

There's news on two cars formerly considered "lost," though in somewhat different circumstances. First off, a big thanks to Chris Baldwin for forwarding along photos taken by Christopher Skidmore of NJ Transit PCC 24. This car (a standard ex-Minneapolis car built in 1947) has been considered something of a mystery since late 2018, when it was spotted on a truck trailer westbound in Pennsylvania. Well it has now turned up about as far west as a truck will go.

It's stored at Carlos Guzman Inc, a painting contractor in Signal Hill, CA near Long Beach. This company has worked with San Diego Vintage Trolley, Muni, and Orange Empire. So I'm not certain whether the car is owned by one of those organizations (though I don't think OERM is involved) or whether the contractor acquired the car "on spec" for some reason. Update: Chris has confirmed that Carlos Guzman Inc does not own the car; nor does OERM or San Diego Vintage Trolley, with which the contractor has worked in the past. It sounds like it's being held for use with some sort of public art display, so we will see what transpires with that.

And while we're in the southwest, a second car thought lost has been found. Phoenix Street Railway 509, which was assumed to have been scrapped back in 1948 when PSR was abandoned, turned up when it was suddenly offered as a donation to the Arizona Street Railway Museum (aka Phoenix Trolley Museum). The announcement is here (no log-in required) - thanks go to Wesley Paulson and Olin Anderson for alerting me to this. ASRM appears to have accepted the donation of the car but has not yet moved the car, so it's still somewhat in limbo, but I have added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 509 is an American Car Company-built double-truck lightweight built in 1928. It's not a Birney, but rather a fairly unusual example of a late-1920s American design that was used by a handful of cities. It's one number up from car 508 (originally 116), which is also preserved by ASRM and was largely restored in the 1980s/1990s. In fact a third car from this series, 504 (originally 108), is owned by ASRM too. It really is remarkable that four cars of two different types were saved from such a small system, but I suppose it's a testament to the climate.

Phoenix Trolley Museum closes

As shown above, the Phoenix Trolley Museum (listed on the PNAERC list under its other name, the Arizona Street Railway Museum) has closed. It's not out of business but it has lost its lease at Deck Park on the north side of downtown Phoenix because the city is renovating that space. The museum has been planning to move its collection to a storage site about a mile away but it's unclear what the long-term plans are. The museum owns three electric cars: two 1920s American-built lightweight cars from Phoenix, one restored and one not, and a 250-volt industrial switcher from the Phelps-Dodge operation in Douglas. All three are now noted as "stored" rather than on display.

Phoenix 44 lives!

What once was thought lost now is found. Thanks to the Old Pueblo Trolley e-newsletter - and Richard Schauer, who forwarded me a copy - I have learned that Phoenix Street Railway 44 is still in existence. Car 44 is the eldest of the three surviving PSR cars and the only one of the three that was not part of the 1928 order for American-built lightweight cars that closed out streetcar service in the city in 1948. Rather, car 44 - which is only a body, and a pretty decrepit one at that - was a 1913-built California car (though it may have been rebuilt as a closed car - see here). A lot about it I don't know, including when it was acquired by the Arizona Street Railway Museum in Phoenix, but for years it was stored in their small barn next to the pride of their fleet, PSR 116.

However when I visited ASRM in late 2016 I found that car 44 had disappeared at some point in the preceding few years, its spot assumed by PSR 504, a sister to car 116 that has the unusual distinction of being (I believe) the only streetcar preserved in the country that once served as a monkey house at the zoo. Anyhow, given car 44's poor condition I assumed it had been scrapped. But I was wrong and it has turned up in the collection of Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson. It was recently moved to their new building in South Tucson where it is stored safely indoors. OPT has a larger collection of cars than ASRM, a collection that includes a smattering of foreign equipment, but car 44 is their only native Arizona streetcar. If anyone knows exactly when it was moved to Tucson I'd be interested to know.

As for ASRM, they are in the process of being evicted from their longtime home at Deck Park on the north side of downtown Phoenix. This was always a claustrophobic location and permitted the museum only a two-track barn and a "main line" about 400' long. So given the impetus to move to more expansive digs, they have chosen... not to! The museum is apparently moving to an even smaller lot about a mile away in a light industrial area. I hope that their decision to eschew the potential of a larger property further away from the city center in preference for a more confined, but central, location turns out better than it has for some others.