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.

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.

Give Me an S, Give Me a T

Arguably the most significant - but almost certainly the most expensive - traction preservation project of recent years has been the Danbury Railway Museum's effort to save the two New York Central mainline electric locomotives marooned in Glenmont, New York. As shown in the above photo posted on Facebook by DRM today, they have conquered some truly remarkable hurdles and managed to save the two locomotives.

The two pieces of equipment in question are both very historically significant. The older of the two, New York Central 100, was the first "S-motor" ever built, emerging from Alco/GE in 1904. It was the prototype for one of the most successful of the early heavy electric locomotive designs and when it was retired in 1964, the cash-strapped NYC still found the wherewithal to preserve it. Unfortunately, it was given over to the nascent American Museum of Electricity in Niskayuna, near Schenectady, but the group ended up failing before it really got off the ground. Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s the locomotive was transferred to the Mohawk & Hudson Chapter NRHS. It is one of three S-motors preserved.

The other piece is New York Central 278, the only surviving "T-motor" from the line. This boxcab, built in 1926 by GE, is a good showcase of the progress that had been made in the 20+ years since the S-motors were built. It remained in service into the late 1970s, and upon retirement ended up the the M&H Chapter mentioned above. Unfortunately for both locomotives, this group seemed to largely founder by the late 1980s, which is around when they shoved their collection - including 100, 278, and a few other pieces of non-electric equipment - into a siding on the grounds of a power plant in Glenmont. There the equipment sat moldering for some 35 years or so, as the NRHS chapter essentially dissolved and rail access to the siding was irretrievably cut.

Within the last year, the power plant site became the focus of a huge redevelopment effort, and the equipment had to go - intact or not. The other pieces of railroad equipment were cut up on-site, but DRM mounted a huge fundraising campaign to get the locomotives disassembled and moved. In the image above, L-R is half of 278's running gear; 100's running gear; 100's body; 278's body; and the other half of 278's running gear. What a project!

Until now the two locomotives have remained on the PNAERC roster listed under M&H Chapter ownership, since I make a practice of only changing ownership when a car is moved and not when it's sold on paper. But now that the locomotives have been extracted (even if they haven't yet quite made it all the way to Danbury), I've changed them to DRM ownership.

This acquisition elevates DRM into the same league as the Illinois Railway Museum and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in having a large and diverse collection of mainline electric equipment. They'll now have 10 pieces, including two very historic locomotives, a unique third rail-powered wrecker, and seven MU cars built between 1954 and 1975. Kudos to DRM for this notable achievement.

M2 Cosmopolitans added to the list

Thanks to Greg Kepka, who alerted me to the fact that the Danbury Railway Museum added a pair of 1970s-era class M2 "Cosmopolitan" MU cars to their collection. These cars were built for service between New York and New Haven and were jointly operated by the New York MTA and the Connecticut Department of Transportation. As such they were dual-voltage, designed to work on both the high-voltage AC of the New Haven and the 600 volt DC approaches into Grand Central Terminal. They were dubbed "Cosmopolitans" to set them apart from the similar type M1 "Metropolitan" cars built slightly earlier for the Long Island Rail Road. Cars 8706 and 8707 were in the last train of operating M2 cars on December 28, 2018 and in April of this year they were moved to DRM and put on display there. I haven't been able to find any decent photos of these cars in their new home but I'm sure photos will show up at some point.

I'm still missing some information on these two (notably, exactly when they were built - the M2 series was constructed over a period of several years) but their new PNAERC listings are relatively complete. For its part, Danbury is quickly gaining a significant collection of mainline electric equipment. Besides their new 1970s cars they also have all three surviving New Haven "washboard" MU cars and a pair of ex-New York Central MU cars from the 1960s. To top it off they've got the electric wrecker from Grand Central Terminal. Their collection already arguably rivals that of IRM or MOT; now all they need is an electric locomotive or two.

New Haven MU car moves

The last New Haven "washboard" MU club car, and one of only three "washboards" still in existence, is being moved to the Danbury Railway Museum. New Haven 5111 has been stored in poor condition in Old Saybrook, Connecticut for a number of years, and a few years back was deaccessed by the Railroad Museum of New England. It has now been acquired by an individual who is moving it to Danbury. It left Old Saybrook on April 10th.

This is a fairly historic car; the only other surviving "washboards" are two combines that are already preserved in Danbury. A third combine preserved in Ohio was scrapped just a year or two ago. Car 5111's interior is gutted and it suffers from fire damage dating to 2006 but the car is thought to be mechanically fairly complete.