A new state has a preserved electric car

Today is something of a hallmark day - I've added another state to the PNAERC list as containing within its boundaries a preserved electric car! Nick Christiansen helpfully submitted as an update the fact that Oregon Electric 133, formerly in use (though recently in disuse) on the Black Hills Central as a locomotive-hauled coach, was sold in May 2017 to a business in Soldotna, Alaska. Yes, that Soldotna, not the one in your state. Anyway, there are some photos here (including the one above) that suggest the car was headed to Alaska Berries Winery however this article has more information and makes it appear that car 133 was actually purchased by a different business, a coffee shop. The coffee shop owner has already rebuilt an ex-C&NW gallery car from Chicago and opened it as "Brew 602" so that's what car 133's new owner is noted as in the roster.

So there are now 47 states listed on PNAERC along with the various Canadian provinces and other countries. Of the three remaining states with no identified electric cars, one - Hawaii - is probably fairly obvious (though there may actually be a Birney in a spaghetti restaurant in Honolulu but I haven't been able to confirm that or find any solid information on it). Care to guess at the other two states we're missing?

Black Hills Central update

As I did some web surfing looking for more information on Utah interurban cars, I came across an update on Bamberger 403. This classic Jewett wooden interurban car was built in 1910 as a motorized combine but was later rebuilt by Bamberger as a coach trailer. It strongly resembles (well, resembled) cars built for the North Shore Line in Chicago, of which none survived.

But it doesn't resemble them much any more. It was stored in steadily deteriorating condition at the Heber Valley Railroad in Utah until 2012, when it was sold to the Black Hills Central and moved to South Dakota. It appears, from an ATRRM blog post, that the BHC rebuilt it last year for use as a locomotive-hauled coach. It fits in well with the other ex-interurban cars in their regular train, the others being from the Oregon Electric, but it's too bad that the car has lost much of its classic appearance to a somewhat clumsy, if admittedly pragmatic, rebuilding. That said, the car wasn't exactly complete and original when it went to South Dakota, and at BHC it should be well maintained.