New England News

A couple of pieces of interesting pieces of information have surfaced from New England. First, it seems SEPTA 618 is on its way to its new home at the Trolley Museum of New York. I've updated its ownership in the PNAERC roster because it's left Seashore, though it hasn't yet arrived in Kingston. The car should be a good match with TMNY, given that it comes with standard-gauge trucks originally off a PATH K-car, so it can be towed in operation at its new home.

And thanks go to Matthew Juergens from the Connecticut Trolley Museum, who passes along information about recent happenings there. The museum is currently in the process of repainting their two-axle Corbin steeplecab, E2. A photo of the recent progress is below, and I have updated the locomotive's status to "undergoing restoration." Thanks, Matthew!

Unique Trucks

This will likely only result in a minor edit to the PNAERC list, but it was too interesting (to a "parts guy" like myself) to pass up on. The North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society posted on Facebook a couple of days ago that they purchased a pair of trucks from the Connecticut Trolley Museum in a deal arranged with the help of Bill Wall. A photo is above, and you'll notice that these aren't just any old streetcar trucks.

From what I can tell, they're ACF Class C trucks, probably built around 1905 - and in all likelihood, this is the only surviving pair of this type. It's a pretty bizarre design, at least for this country, with the journal boxes set in castings that pivot off hubs near the truck bolster. Trucks with this feature were more common overseas (London County Council 1, just restored at Crich, has trucks with a similar layout) but were quite rare in the U.S. The closest thing I can think of is the Brill 95E truck designed for CSL 7001 (photos here), but that was a plate-frame design with inside journal boxes that today is extinct.

Anyway, where did these trucks come from and where are they going? They're off Springfield Terminal 8, a wooden cab-on-flat work motor that arrived at CTM in 1956 and was dismantled around 1983 after it became too badly deteriorated to save. And they're going to Trenton Street Railway 288. They're not strictly correct for that car - it had Brill 39E "Maximum Traction" trucks in service. But those trucks, or any MaxTrac trucks for that matter, are essentially impossible to find. And if finding a visually similar truck is no longer on the table, any kind of period-appropriate streetcar trucks should work. I think it's great that this unique and historically significant pair of trucks has a promising new home. Thanks to Bill Wall and Bill Hirsch for background info.

Updates from Warehouse Point

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for reaching out to Bill Wall, and thanks especially to Bill for writing with a series of updates from the Connecticut Trolley Museum, aka Warehouse Point. Bill even sent along a series of photos taken just a couple of weeks ago at CTM. All photos below are taken by Bill Wall except where noted.

First, the good news: as shown above, Connecticut Company box motor 2023 has not been scrapped, as we had previously thought. I got it mixed up with ConnCo 2022, a different box motor which was, in fact, scrapped by CTM a few years back. While 2023 is not in terrific shape, it is very much intact. It's been added back onto the list following a brief absence.

Another mystery solved is York Utilities 72, a 1919 Birney built for the Laconia Street Railway and later sold to York Utilities in Sanford, Maine. This is a body that has been at CTM since 1984, and as seen above, it's still there - it's stored on the ground under a tarp, off in the woods. Its condition has been updated from "unknown" to "stored inoperable."

From there, the news gets less sunny. First, Bill confirms that Connecticut Company 1550 was scrapped by CTM some time back. It's pictured above in a photo that I took back in 2007. This was a typical double-truck suburban car of the type so common on ConnCo. It was built by Osgood-Bradley in 1911 and, unlike nearly all the surviving ConnCo cars, went to Connecticut Railway & Lighting when the system split up in 1936. It was retired the next year and its body came to CTM in 1977.

This 2007 photo shows Bristol Traction 43, a double-truck lightweight safety car built by Wason in 1927 for the Fitchburg & Leominster Street Railway. I don't have any recent views of this car, but I don't think it's a stretch to assume that its condition did not improve over the 15 years after this photo was taken. Bill confirms that this car was dismantled about two years ago. It was the last F&L car in a museum, though there's an F&L body surviving as a house in central Massachusetts. In terms of design, there's a pretty similar Wason lightweight preserved intact at Seashore in the form of York Utilities 88.

Next up is Manchester Street Railway 94, shown above in a photo taken in 2007. Another body, this single-truck, railroad-roof streetcar was built by Wason in 1905. The car showed up at CTM in 1987.

And here it is today, or what little is left of it. Car 94 has completely collapsed, and probably did so closer to 2007 than to today. It's been taken off the list, of course.

And then finally we have Bristol Traction 34, shown above. This is a single-truck arch-roof convertible of pretty unusual design; by the time Wason built it for the Bristol & Plainville in 1917, not too many companies were ordering full convertibles like this. It was also built with an unusual Brill Radiax E1 truck, making it one of just two cars on the PNAERC list that once had that type (bet you can't guess the other one). Finally, according to my notes it arrived at CTM way back in 1948, astonishingly, which certainly makes it one of the very earliest car bodies acquired by a trolley museum anywhere - most trolley museums hadn't even been founded in 1948. But in recent decades it just sat outside next to the CTM shop, slowly becoming more derelict. It's hard to decide when this frog is fully boiled, so to speak, but given the photo above, I think it's safe to consider car 34 to be effectively gone as an intact car. So, I've taken it off the list.

With these changes, the CTM roster is down from three Bristol cars to just one, and down from 47 cars to 43 cars total in the collection. When you add in the two interurban cars, two Chicago 'L' cars, and the locomotive that the museum has also deaccessed within the last five years, CTM has culled its collection by more than 20%.

On an unrelated note, Wesley was able to track down one more car from the "mystery cars" list that, fortunately, is still around. Los Angeles Railway 1030, a Birney body built in 1920 by St. Louis, had disappeared about 10 years ago. It has now turned up, stored under a tarp in a bus lot in Downey, California. I'm not exactly certain who owns it, but it may still be the "Angeleno Heights Trolley Line" group that owned the car a decade ago. The car's status has been updated from "unknown" to "stored inoperable."

Three More Off the List

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson, who continues to track down cars on the "status unknown" list and send me updated information. Of the latest batch, one car, Lackawanna 4322, is intact and undergoing restoration work in the Catskill Mountain Railroad's yard in Phoenicia, New York. But his other two updates are removals.

Lackawanna 3565, a standard 1930 Pullman-built motor car shown above in a 2015 photo, had been stored derelict on the St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern for years and was formally deaccessed by the tourist railroad back in 2022. At some point later that year or in 2023 the car was indeed cut up. It's been removed from the list.

The second car to be removed is Worcester Consolidated Railway 038, a cab-on-flat locomotive homebuilt by the Worcester system in 1912. This car has always been on the Seashore Trolley Museum's roster - it was acquired by that museum way back in 1946 - but was listed as "disassembled," so I don't have any photos of it. I had increasingly suspected that Seashore may have written it off, and correspondence from their Executive Director, Katie Orlando, confirms that this is the case. This was the last Worcester Consolidated Railway car preserved in the US, though there are two arch-roof cars from the system known to still exist in Brazil. I've taken 038 off the list, which reduces the number of Seashore cars on the PNAERC list to 190.

The third car to be removed, shown above, is ConnCo box motor 2023. Our own webmaster, Jeff Hakner, confirms that this car was demolished by the Connecticut Trolley Museum at some point within the past few years. Car 2023 was homebuilt by ConnCo in 1910 and at the ends of its career was fitted with a diesel generator so that it could operate as a switcher after the wires came down. I recall seeing it in 2007 and taking the above photo, but the car may have been disposed of not long after that - I can't find any images more recent. With this, the CTM roster on PNAERC is now at 46 cars and the total number of cars on the list is 2,091.

As an aside, speaking of Worcester 038, "disassembled" cars on the PNAERC list are an odd little subset. I have a policy that any electric car that's at a museum goes on the list, even if the museum doesn't consider it accessioned, because of how common it is for something that's deaccessioned to hang around for a long time, and sometimes become "re-accessioned." And as for whether a car is "at" a museum, I generally rely on the museum itself to make that call. This means that there's a handful of cars on the list that you'll be hard pressed to recognize, or in some cases track down at all. With the loss of 038, I think the only car on the list that's "completely" disassembled may be Staten Island Midland 157, owned by Branford but stored off-site in an indeterminate number of pieces. There's also Veracruz 6 in Fort Smith; I'm honestly not sure how intact this car is, only that it's in some state of disassembly. There are a few cars that have been mostly reduced to a flat car, including Los Angeles Railway 59 at Travel Town, Rochester 0243 at the New York Museum of Transportation, and St. Louis Public Service 850 at the National Museum of Transportation, which is notable in that its disassembly occurred quite rapidly and unexpectedly due to a tunnel lining collapse at the museum decades ago. Finally, there are a couple of cars like Chicago Surface Lines 1467 at IRM and Des Moines 512 at Boone that have been reduced to a skeletal framework, but are at least generally recognizable as electric cars. How many of these cars will be reassembled again? Your guess is as good as mine.

Boxcab Returns to Canada

The photo above was posted today on the Connecticut Trolley Museum's Facebook page and shows Canadian National 6714 being craned onto a flatbed truck for the trip back home north of the border. CN 6714 is a mainline electric boxcab built in 1917 by GE for the suburban electrification out of Montreal. Along with the rest of its class, plus some English Electric-built boxcabs built slightly later, it remained in service a a remarkable 78 years and wasn't retired until 1995. This is one of four identical examples preserved, and until now has been the only one in the United States.

CN 6714 never really fit in at CTM, though, as it dwarfed most of their other equipment and its 2,400V DC design meant it couldn't operate. It was deaccessed in 2018 and, as mentioned here last year, ended up being acquired by the Halton County Radial Railway, near its place of construction in Toronto. It's now en route to Ontario, so I've changed its PNAERC record to reflect its new place of residence.

That means that CTM has disposed of all but one of the six cars it deaccessed in 2018. Three have been scrapped and two sold. To my knowledge, only LIRR 4153 remains in East Windsor. The size of the museum's traction collection, at least as far as PNAERC is concerned, now stands at 47 cars.

Northeastern Updates

There are a few updates to the PNAERC data out of museums (and non-museums) in the northeast. First, NYCTA 9075, an R-33ML subway car from New York, was moved over the weekend from its home of 17 years on a plinth in front of Queens Borough Hall. Many thanks to Bill Wall for the striking photo above. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the car has gone, though online rumors suggest somewhere in New Jersey (which doesn't narrow it down much!). At the time the car was sold, it was said to have been purchased by an art dealer, so make of that what you will. Any updates are appreciated!

Second, there's another update to the ongoing saga of the deaccessed Warehouse Point cars. Halton County Radial Railway has come to an agreement to acquire Canadian National 6714, a boxcab locomotive from the Montreal suburban electrification. The locomotive was built in Toronto (it was news to me that this series of six locomotives were built in three different locations!) so has some local significance in addition to its technological significance. That means that, of the six cars deaccessed by CTM, three have been scrapped and two sold with just one still available: LIRR 4153. Any takers?

And finally, Branford's restoration shop has posted on its Facebook page that the wheel sets and motors have been pulled from underneath their diminutive four-wheel GE locomotive "Amy." Surely one of the more obscure pieces of equipment at the museum, this 1902 industrial boxcab gains a bit of prominence on the PNAERC list because the top line in the alphabetical "Now or Formerly Owned By" search box on the homepage is always Abendroth Foundry, the locomotive's owner. It's been out of service for years but that looks like it will be changing in the near future. The locomotive's condition has been changed to "undergoing restoration."

North Shore 162 returns home

North Shore 162, shown in a photo posted by Rob Brogle to Facebook here (no login required), is back in home territory for the first time in nearly 60 years. It's been unloaded in Mukwonago, on the East Troy Electric Railroad, and will be held for future restoration. The car's PNAERC record has been appropriately updated to change its ownership from Connecticut Trolley Museum to ETER. It's in rough shape, but mostly complete and certainly restorable with enough work.

As I've mentioned before, East Troy has been on an acquisition spree lately. They're now up to 25 electric cars, plus a few freight cars that are not on the PNAERC list. But they're somewhat unusual among museums in that most of the preserved cars that passed through East Troy are not currently owned by ETER.

A while back, evidently when I had way too much time on my hands, I made this graph showing the electric cars that I know have passed through preservation in East Troy. The first group in East Troy was The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society. For a while it coexisted with the privately-owned Wisconsin Trolley Museum, which started out in North Prairie, Wisconsin, and then moved to East Troy and renamed itself the East Troy Electric Railroad. This was shortly after TWERHS was "evicted" from the actual East Troy-to-Mukwonago railroad, which was owned by the village of East Troy (confused yet?). In 1988-1989, TWERHS disbanded itself as a museum and sold off its entire collection, mostly to IRM. The size of ETER's collection has risen and fallen over the years. An impressive fleet of South Shore cars was amassed over time, while in the late 2000s and early 2010s there was an aggressive campaign to sell or scrap equipment. But at this point, ETER seems to be on firmer footing - it's no longer privately owned, but is rather run by a more typical nonprofit, and has a solid volunteer base.

As an aside, I should note that a few cars that were sold by TWERHS or ETER were later scrapped by other organizations, and those are shown in the chart as "sold" and not "scrapped." Only cars that were cut up in East Troy - or Mukwonago - are included in the "scrapped" category.

Another car headed to East Troy

East Troy is on an acquisition spree, as noted in this post from their Facebook page over the weekend (no log-in required). The next car on their list, due to arrive sometime later this month, is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 162 (its owner will be updated once the car is physically moved). Following the recent dismantling of car 154, this is now one of two surviving cars from the North Shore's original order for steel cars, the other being car 160 at IRM. Car 162 was built by Brill in 1915 and retired from service when the North Shore quit in 1963. At that time it went to Niskayuna, New York, to be a part of the planned American Museum of Electricity. Unfortunately this project never got off the ground, and car 162 (and 710, which was scrapped last year) went to the Connecticut Trolley Museum in 1971.

It has sat there ever since, never operating (I believe it may have been stripped of some metal while in Niskayuna), but with a tarpaper roof that protected it somewhat better than car 710. Its condition is very rough, no doubt, but largely complete. Once restored, it would be the second North Shore interurban car at East Troy.

This also means that of the six electrics deaccessed by CTM in 2018 (article here), only two are really still in limbo: the mainline electrics, LIRR 4153 and CN 6714. Car 162 has now been sold, one CTA 'L' car and one North Shore car have been scrapped, and the other CTA car - CTA 4175 - is, according to photos taken a few weeks ago, still in partially-scrapped "can-opener victim" condition from last fall. But its ultimate fate can hardly be in doubt. Anyone interested in an MP54?

ON AN UNRELATED TOPIC... a comment was posted that Pittsburg County Railway 32, a wood interurban car body on display in McAlester, Oklahoma, has been destroyed by fire. Can anyone confirm or offer more details?

Postcard from Warehouse Point

Someone who wishes to remain anonymous has submitted some photos taken a week ago at the Connecticut Trolley Museum during that organization's "Everything That Moves" event. Many thanks for these submissions, as they have made possible some notable updates to the PNAERC list.

First, here's Bristol Traction 34, an unusual single-truck semi-convertible built by Wason in 1917. It's a body that has long sat alongside the CTM shop and at this point it seems that it has started to collapse. I'm leaving it on the PNAERC list for now, but with a note about its condition.

Here's a sad one: Chicago Elevated Railway 4284, a standard Chicago "4000" built in 1922 and acquired by CTM in 1975. In the late 1970s this car was repainted in as-built colors and some backdating work (notably the door sash) was done, but I believe its interior was left taken apart so it was never put into service. A 1979 photo can be found here. It's been deteriorating for years. This car is still part of the CTM collection and was not part of the recent deaccession and sale.

Corbin E2 is a four-wheel battery locomotive built in 1907 by Baldwin-Westinghouse. I have no idea whether it ever ran at CTM, but if it did, then it was quite a few years ago.

In the top photo, Corbin E2 is on the left and in the center is Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority 3003, the oldest extant Boston PCC car and one of five PCC's from that city at CTM. This car was built by Pullman-Standard in 1941 and acquired by CTM back in 1977. Part of its interior was restored by volunteers (you can see some fairly nice-looking ceiling panels in that second shot) but then the car was put outside and it went downhill rapidly.

MBTA 3333 is Dallas double-ended PCC, built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 as Dallas Railway & Terminal 625. It was sold to Boston in 1959 and went to CTM in 1978. Amazingly, this car actually ran as recently as about 2006, and I believe it's the most recent Dallas double-ended PCC anywhere to move under its own power.

I'll confess I'm not certain which is which, but these two are MBTA 3306 and 3309, both "picture window" PCC cars built for Boston by Pullman-Standard in 1951. I think this was the only series of PCC streetcar to be built for U.S. service with MCM control. These cars have both been at CTM since 1992 and I do not know whether either has ever run at the museum.

This is Montreal Tramways W1, a generally typical derrick work car. It was built by Industrial Brownhoist in 1910 and served until the end, going to CTM in 1959. Its cab has long sat outside the museum's shop building.

And now we get to the cars that were deaccessed in 2018. This is Chicago Transit Authority 4175, one of four surviving (perhaps "surviving" should be in quotation marks) center-entrance "Baldy" type 4000s. The car was built by Cincinnati in 1915, put into work service as work motor S360 in 1965, and retired in 1979. At that point it was briefly shipped out to the Illinois Railway Museum, where its motors were removed because CTM wanted a Baldy trailer and not a Baldy motor (the earlies "Baldies" were trailers but this one was built, and always ran as, a motor car). It then went out to Connecticut. I'm honestly not sure whether to leave it on the PNAERC list. I don't know why its steel roof is torn open like that, and it appears that part of the car side has been pushed in. This doesn't look like the car just started collapsing; it looks more like CTM has started scrapping it. Either way, it doesn't look very salvageable.

North Shore 162 is one of the two interurban cars from that line that were deaccessed by CTM in 2018 and is by far the better of the two in terms of condition. That said, its condition is deteriorating rapidly and it already looks a lot like car 710 did a decade or so ago. I'm not sure what the museum's plans are for this car right now, nor whether it has been purchased - either as a complete car or for parts - by any other group.

And here's the other North Shore car. This is car 710, built by Cincinnati in 1924. Like car 162, it went to the ill-fated American Museum of Electricity project in Niskayuna, NY after the North Shore quit in 1963 and then ended up going to CTM in 1971. Neither North Shore car ever ran in Connecticut and car 710's condition had gotten particularly bad in recent years. It now appears that CTM is in the process of scrapping the car; it's obviously been tipped off its trucks and it looks like underbody equipment is being salvaged for reuse, which is good. I have removed this car from the PNAERC roster. It is the fourth North Shore car, and first 700-series car, scrapped during the preservation era.

I cannot say with absolute certainty but I'm pretty sure that this pile of scrap metal is all that remains of Chicago Transit Authority 4409, the other 4000-series car (beside 4175 pictured above) that was deaccessed in 2018. Car 4409 was a standard, generally unremarkable 4000-series car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and acquired by CTM in 1979. Car 4409 has been removed from the PNAERC list. (That said, if I'm wrong about the identity of the subject of this photo, please let me know! I've been wrong about this kind of thing before.)

It's tough to see electric cars getting scrapped like this, but as I wrote when the museum announced the deaccession of these pieces, it makes sense to get rid of them. None of the deaccessed cars is unique in preservation and all are likely beyond CTM's means to restore at this point. Other, more historic cars at the museum, like AE&C 303, are suffering grievously for want of money and resources, and CTM is doing the right thing to pare down its collection so that it can focus a bit more on maintaining the other cars in its fleet. It appears that parts are being stripped off of these cars to facilitate the restoration of cars at other museums, and at this point that's probably the highest and best use for these pieces.

EDIT: I've also changed the status of two other cars at CTM. York Utilities 72, a Birney built in 1919 for Laconia Street Railway, and Manchester Street Railway 94, a single-truck Wason dating to 1905, are both streetcars bodies that are currently listed on CTM's website roster. However I never saw them when I visited the museum a few times 10-15 years ago and I believe the reason is that their locations had been swallowed by the forest and made them largely inaccessible except during the winter. Regardless, I've changed these two from "stored inoperable" to "situation unknown" because I have doubts they are still intact. Any clarification on their status is appreciated.

Warehouse Point questions

"Hey," you say, "that's not an electric car." And it surely isn't. It's the LEV2, a British railbus constructed in 1980 by Leyland/Wickham and intended as a prototype for the American market. But railbuses were never as popular in the US as they were in Britain and this unloved example bounced around a bit before landing at the Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor, CT.

It was one of several pieces of equipment deaccessed by CTM in 2018 and offered for sale. As outlined in this blog post, the sale also included six pieces of electric equipment: both of the museum's North Shore interurban cars, a Long Island Railroad MP54 commuter coach, a Canadian National boxcab electric locomotive, and two Chicago 4000-series 'L' cars.

The reason this post features the LEV2 is that it has come to light within the past week that the British railbus is no more. Despite efforts to buy it from CTM and possibly repatriate it to the UK, the museum has apparently cut it up. Rumor has it that at least one of the North Shore cars may also have been cut up, despite offers from other museum groups to acquire that car as a parts source for other restoration projects. So the question is: can anyone confirm what electric cars, if any, have been scrapped at Warehouse Point in the last couple of years? Are any of the six electrics offered up for sale in 2018 still available for sale? Any information is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: this question has more-or-less been answered.

Trolleyville alumni newsletter

Following the return of Shaker Heights 18 to operation at IRM, the good news for Trolleyville alumni continues to roll in. This past weekend, Iowa Southern Utilities 1 was made operational at the Connecticut Trolley Museum for the first time since it left Ohio. The above photo was published on their Facebook page (no log-in required). The car, a single-truck line car rebuilt from a streetcar dating all the way back to 1892, required some wiring and roof work to be made runnable.

With recent progress on ex-Trolleyville cars (a third Trolleyville car is also likely to run in the coming months for the first time since it left Ohio), and given that it's now been just over a decade since the Great Dispersal of the Trolleyville collection that was coordinated by Branford's Bill Wall, I figured it was time for an alumni report. What ended up happening to all of the equipment from Trolleyville?

Connecticut Trolley Museum
ISU 1 - this line car has been stored under cover since 2010 and has just been made operational
CA&S 101 - stored indoors since 2010, it was vandalized by copper thieves in 2012 and has not run at CTM
AE&C 303 - stored indoors and operated on occasion, though its large size makes it unwieldy for regular use at CTM

Fort Smith Trolley Museum
CTUSU 9 - the more complete of two Veracruz open cars owned by FSTM, this car is said to be undergoing restoration work

Fox River Trolley Museum
SHRT 304 - stored indoors in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 458 - currently stored inside and the subject of a major re-roofing project

Illinois Railway Museum
SHRT 18 - the last car to leave Cleveland (in 2013), stored tarped until 2016, just made operational
CTUSU 19 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 36 - restored to operation mid-2010s, operated on a regular basis
GCRTA 63 - stored indoors since 2016, made operational but unrestored and not currently in use
CA&E 319 - restored early-2010s, operated on a regular basis
CA&E 409 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis
CA&E 451 - undergoing restoration work to as-built condition, work updates here
CA&E 453 - the only extant Trolleyville car to change hands post-2010; at Electric City Trolley Museum 2010-2019, moved to IRM in 2019, now stored indoors awaiting restoration
CA&E 460 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis

National Capital Trolley Museum
Blackpool 606 - British "Boat Car" not on the PNAERC roster, in good condition and operable
TTC 4602 - in good condition and operated on a regular basis

New York Museum of Transportation
CTS 021 - stored indoors in good condition and in use

Northern Ohio Railway Museum
GCRTA 172 - stored outdoors in fair condition
SHRT 303 - undergoing restoration including heavy work on the end of the car
CRC 1225 - stored indoors in good condition
SHRT OX - stored indoors in good condition

Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
CSR 2227 - restored to operation early-2010s, operated on a regular basis
PRys 4145 - left Cleveland in mid-2009 before the rest of the collection was dispersed; in good condition and operated on a regular basis
TR&L "Toledo" - stored indoors in good condition, some restoration work has been done

Seashore Trolley Museum
GCRTA 113 - stored outside since 2010 in moderate condition
CRC 2365 - tarped and in outside storage since 2010

Cars lost since 2010
SHRT 71 - Pullman PCC car in poor condition, sold to Electric City 2009, scrapped for parts at NORM in 2010
SHRT 76 - Pullman PCC car in poor condition, sold to Electric City 2009, scrapped for parts at NORM in 2010
CA&S 100 - Iowa box motor in poor condition, was sold to PTM to strip for parts. Some components are slated to go to the parlor car "Toledo."
MBTA 3334 - this Dallas double-end PCC was stored at IRM by owner McKinney Avenue from 2009 until 2015, when it was moved to Dallas. MATA ended up scrapping it in 2017.

Overall the Trolleyville collection has fared extremely well, which is fitting given the good condition of most of the pieces when they were in North Olmsted and Cleveland. Of the 31 electric cars listed here, only four were scrapped. All but three of the remaining cars are currently stored under cover and 14, or more than half of the extant cars, are currently operational with a further four (at least) the subject of active restoration work.

Corrections are welcomed. This doesn't count electric cars that left Trolleyville before the Great Dispersal like AE&FRE 306 at IRM or GCRTA 163 at ORM nor does it count a couple of steam railroad cabooses that found new homes in 2010.

Connecticut Company 65 restored to operation

I'm a little bit late on this, but about a month ago in November Connecticut Company 65 was restored to operation by the Connecticut Trolley Museum as reported by their shop blog. The car has been out of service for many years but is largely complete and, following refurbishment of its roof including installation of a rubber roof membrane, trolley boards and poles were fitted to make it possible for the car to move under power again. Car 65 is an historic piece: it's the first car acquired by CTM, back in 1941, making it one of the earliest streetcars in the country to be preserved in a museum. It was built by Wason in 1906 for Consolidated, the predecessor to ConnCo, for service on the Norwich to Putnam line. It ran up until 1941 and then became the "mother car" for CTM. In its overall design it's very similar to a number of other ConnCo double-truck suburban cars preserved at CTM, Branford, and Seashore, but there aren't any other cars from its exact order preserved. Its status has been updated to reflect that it is now operational.

Electric cars at CTM go up for sale

The Connecticut Trolley Museum has announced that they are deaccessing a number of pieces of equipment in their collection. Among these are six electric cars: two interurban cars, a heavy electric, two rapid transit cars, and a locomotive. Among CTM's collection, this eclectic mix comprises some of the least historic and least restorable (in terms of current condition) cars so it's understandable why they are taking this step.

The two interurban cars are both North Shore Line cars: car 162, shown above in a 2010 photo, and car 710. The former is a 1915 Brill, part of the line's first order for steel coaches, and although badly deteriorated it is by far the better of the two - which is to say that it's probably salvageable for someone with enough money and determination (2015 photo here). The latter is a 1926 Cincinnati product and is in wretched condition, its roof having collapsed several years ago and the car's interior (and, for that matter, underbody) having been exposed to the weather for some time. At this point it is probably further gone than most car bodies in museums. Neither car is unique in preservation; the 1915 order is represented by car 160 at IRM while the 1926 order is represented just an hour down the road by car 709 at Branford. As a point of curiosity, both of these cars came to CTM from the never-opened American Museum of Electricity in Niskayuna, New York.

The heavy electric is Long Island Railroad 4153, an MP-54 built in 1930 by the Pennsy. Built to run on 600vDC, it was fitted with a trolley pole by CTM back in the 1970s and may have briefly run there. It's not unique in preservation either, with other examples of the type preserved at Seashore and in Syracuse, New York. This car was the subject of a cosmetic restoration at CTM just a few years back but it suffers from the same body rot problems that all other MP-54 types in preservation have. It's also far too big to be practical at CTM and to my knowledge it won't fit in any of their barns.

And speaking of "not unique" that brings us to the two rapid transit cars on the list, Chicago 4000-series elevated car 4175 and car 4409. The former is a 1915 "Baldy" motor car; the type is also represented by car 4103 at Fox River and car 4146 at IRM. The car is listed on the CTM site as a trailer and the reason is that when they acquired it back in 1985, it made a brief side trip to IRM where its motor truck was swapped out for a trailer truck. CTM wanted a Chicago trailer for whatever reason (the last 4000-series trailer is car 4043 at Northern Ohio) so they de-motored this one. Some work was done on car 4175 to backdate it but the work didn't get very far and it has mouldered for many years now (2015 photo here). Its highest and best use may be as a parts source to outfit Fox River's car. Car 4409, built in 1924, is one of three "plushies" that CTM acquired in the 1970s and is in the worst condition of the three. The other two are being retained by the museum. The commonality of this type need not be described.

And finally there's the locomotive, Canadian National 6714, built by GE in 1917. This was one of the 3000vDC electrics that ran Montreal commuter service until the early 1990s, an impressive tenure. It's one of four preserved (the other three are in Canada) so on its own it's not very historically significant, particularly given the somewhat unique nature of its construction. It has never operated at CTM and, like the Long Island car, cannot fit into any of the barns; it's basically been plinthed at the museum entrance for the 22 years it's been there. (I should mention that some other equipment, including trolley buses and a few steam road pieces, is also being deaccessioned as part of this move.)

On the whole, I think CTM is to be applauded for rationalizing their collection. None of this equipment is of strong historic significance, much less local significance, and none is likely to be restored to operation at CTM anytime soon. Their plan is to offer this equipment first to nonprofits and then to for-profit organizations, possibly scrappers although that's not really clear and may instead suggest individuals. They've also stated that preference will be given to preservation offers, as opposed to "parting out" offers. Some of this equipment - notably the North Shore cars - has been unofficially for sale for many years, but at an extremely high price that has squelched any serious interest. What offers will be entertained for this equipment at the present time remains to be seen.

Montreal 2600 out of service

The Connecticut Trolley Museum Shop Blog reports that Montreal Tramways 2600, a mainstay of the museum's operating fleet, has been removed from service for the foreseeable future due to wheel damage. This 1929 car came straight to CTM from Montreal and has operated at Warehouse Point for years. Its status has been changed to "stored operable."

Other news items from the CTM shop blog include updates on work on Nassau Electric Railway 169, a rather historic single-trucker from Brooklyn, and news of repair work being performed on Oshawa 18, the museum's ex-Auburn & Syracuse Baldwin-Westinghouse steeplecab.

Bristol Traction corrections

I'm always trying to go through the PNAERC list to check information, especially historical (ownership) information, and correct listings. This week it was time to take a look at the surviving cars from Bristol Traction, the street railway in Bristol, Connecticut. BT was a small system, with only about two dozen cars at any one time, but there are three survivors (sort of): car 28, a 1907 single-trucker; car 34, an unusual 1917 convertible; and car 43, a 1927 double-trucker bought secondhand which is also the only surviving car from the Fitchburg & Leominster in Massachusetts. All are located at the Connecticut Trolley Museum. All three are car bodies in various stages of disrepair, though car 28 at least is on a truck which looks from photos to be roughly correct. Car 34 is probably the most distinctive of the group: not only is it a two-axle, arch-roof convertible - a rare type to be built as late as 1917 - but it is also one of only two extant cars that was built with a Brill Radiax truck with "steerable" axles.

Anyway, some research into the history of Bristol Traction (not to be confused with the Bristol Traction located in Tennessee) revealed that none of the above cars was built for BT. Rather, BT was only created in 1927 and before that was known as the Bristol & Plainville. The two older cars were built for the B&P while car 43 was purchased from the F&L, possibly around 1932 when the F&L quit or maybe earlier. (Anyone know for sure?) I also discovered that car 34, which had formerly been listed as built by Brill, was actually built by Wason - something it has in common with the other two BT cars. I'm still in need of a lot of mechanical information on these Bristol cars but at least their histories seem to have been cleared up somewhat.

Warehouse Point updates

Trolling Flickr sometimes yields recent information on cars on the PNAERC list. Looking through recently-posted photos of an event at Warehouse Point in 2017 provided some updates on a couple of ConnCo cars at that museum. Car 65, formerly in storage, has been repainted and is now on display in the museum's enviable Visitor Center (above). And another ConnCo suburban car, 1326, which was damaged by vandals in 2010, is back in operation as shown below.