Buckeye Lake changes

One of the largest private collections of traction equipment in the country is Buckeye Lake Trolley, a collection east of Columbus, Ohio, near its namesake city. I noticed recently that additional buildings have been constructed on the BLT property, which is a good thing of course. But one result is that some of the equipment that was there has "disappeared" - either into the buildings or into a scrap bin, I don't know. So a few of the cars in the collection have had their statuses changed to "unknown" to reflect this uncertainty. Any updates are greatly appreciated!

A quick run-down of the 21 pieces of equipment located at the main site (follow along using the roster linked above):

Several cars are easy because they're still visible on Google aerial views. These include the three PAT 4000-series rebuilt PCCs, two ex-SLPS/ex-Shaker Heights PCCs, two C&LE freight motors, and a Philadelphia snow sweeper. So that's eight cars.

Then there's the equipment that I believe is probably stored in the barns that have been built over the past decade or so. This includes a trio of quite historic interurban car bodies, CSW&C 121, LSE 7, and CD&M 500, as well as the body of Columbus streetcar 664. Now we're up to twelve "likely" accounted for.

The next group is equipment that's unique, but in rough shape. These could be stored inside or they may not have fared well enough to be moved, I just don't know. Fostoria & Fremont 40, Toledo & Eastern 40, PSTC 63, PAT 1976, and Lake Shore Electric snow sweeper "C" all fall into this category. A few of these cars used to be stored out near the street and are no longer in their longtime spots. I've changed their statuses to "situation unknown."

That leaves just four cars. Two are ex-Cleveland, ex-Toronto, ex-Shaker PCC cars in truly terrible shape (all cars from this series suffered horribly from salt damage owing to their years north of the border). The other two, a Pittsburgh snow sweeper and a cut-down CTA work motor, were only on hand as parts sources, so they may still be knocking around or may have been "parted out." All four of these have also had their statuses changed to "situation unknown."

Pittsburgh 4000 goes missing

Thanks to Nicholas Katz for pointing out that Port Authority Transit 4006, which has been sitting for around 15 years in a parking lot at the west end of the truncated Superior Viaduct in Cleveland, has gone missing. The car - shown above in a 2019 photo from here - is one of the PCC cars heavily remanufactured by PAT in the 1980s and renumbered into the 4000-series. This car was rebuilt in 1987 using 1949-vintage PCC car 1767 as a core and was retired in 1998. For a few years it was stored in Columbus behind a semi-derelict industrial facility on West Nationwide Boulevard (I recall seeing it there in 2002) but then that facility got renovated and sometime in the mid-2000s it showed up in the parking lot at 2401 West Superior Viaduct in Cleveland.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Wesley Paulson and Dave Hamley for getting to the bottom of this one. Car 4006 was indeed moved back to Buckeye Lake, Ohio, where its owner is based, in August 2021. There it joins fellow 4000-series cars 4011 and 4012 along with a collection of other miscellaneous cars.

Yet more CLRV's

It's time yet again to add more CLRV's to the PNAERC list. We are now up to a total of 12 CLRV's and two articulated ALRV's on the list and that's not the end of it. There are at least two more of the former type that have been acquired by Halton County (they plan on scrapping two of their six for parts but it will take time to decide which two) and there are rumors that two or three additional cars were sold in a recent auction to buyers unknown. So let's get to it.

The first contender is car 4001, one of the original 1977 prototype cars built by SIG in Switzerland. This article from December was brought to my attention pointing out that the car is being preserved by TTC itself as part of the system's historic fleet. Also being preserved by TTC is car 4089, a standard production car dating to 1979 (or maybe 1980 - delivery took place over a couple of years) and built in Canada by Hawker-Siddeley. Both cars have now been added to the PNAERC list.

Then there's a pair of cars that have been acquired by the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, car 4024 and car 4170. What does the CLRV have to do with American mining? Glad you asked! Not a thing, as far as I can tell. However AIMCM seems to be very closely intertwined with Buckeye Lake Trolley, so it seems likely that these cars are intended to fit in more with the BLT collection than with the collection of mining equipment currently shown on the AIMCM website. Right now both cars are being stored at Halton County pending movement to the states, and I've made a notation that they're owned by BLT / AIMCM.

Speaking of Halton, in addition to the two AIMCM cars they're currently hosting, and in addition to the two cars they're currently hosting that are owned by Seashore, and in addition to the two mystery cars mentioned above potentially acquired as parts sources, they've also gotten a fourth CLRV for their historic collection. It's the car pictured (while still in service last year) at the top of this post: car 4178, which in September 2019 was hand-painted in a very colorful livery by local Toronto artists. TTC asked Halton if they would be interested in preserving this admittedly unique piece and they gamely agreed, so the car is now in Rockwood and also on the PNAERC list. Thanks to Gord McOuat for passing along this update.

And finally - for the CLRV category at least - comes this article about a young man who has purchased car 4187 and is moving it to his family's farm in rural Priceville, north/northwest of Toronto. Though I usually don't list cars like this until they've physically been moved, it sounded like this was a fait accompli and with private collections like this it's not terribly likely that updates will be communicated to the preservation community at large. EDIT: I was wrong - the update is here.

But wait, there's an encore. It appears that a second ALRV - the two-car articulated version of the CLRV - has indeed been preserved by TTC, joining CLRV's 4001 and 4089 in the system's historic collection. I believe that it is car 4207, built in 1988 and withdrawn from service in mid-2019. What with the pandemic scrambling things, neither the ALRV nor the TTC's preserved CLRV's seem to have made any public appearances, but at some point they will presumably emerge to join the system's Peter Witt and its two PCC cars in excursion service.