Northern Texas Traction car tracked down

I've been wondering for a while whatever happened to Northern Texas Traction 407. The car was put up for auction and sold in early 2024, supposedly to a buyer from North Carolina, but I wasn't able to figure out where it went until now. The photo shown here, from this Flickr page, was taken this July and I only noticed it now. It seems that car 407 was purchased by the Aberdeen Carolina & Western, a shortline railroad with a tourist railroad side business known for flashy paint jobs and unorthodox adaptive reuse projects. I cannot fathom what they have in mind for car 407, but for the moment it seems to just be in storage in their impressive car shop. I've updated the car's record and added the AC&W to the PNAERC database, as this is their first piece of traction equipment.

Now's Your Chance

...to own a wooden interurban car of your very own! The car shown above is Northern Texas Traction 407, a parlor trailer built in 1919 by St. Louis Car Company (very late for a wood car). It was a house in Texas for many years after retirement in 1934, but in 2006 it was acquired by the Edwards Rail Car Company for potential conversion into a doodlebug (like this one, which was rebuilt by Edwards from Southern Traction 316). Unfortunately, Edwards went out of business in 2008, and the car has apparently been sitting in the old Edwards building in Montgomery, Alabama, ever since.

The car is now being auctioned off as part of the Royce G. Kershaw Jr. Estate (the source of the above photo) so get ready to place your bids! Car 407 looks fairly solid, but is also obviously stripped down to the shell after its years as a house. The estate includes a 2-6-0 Mogul, an impressive-looking wooden railroad coach, and at least two Edwards doodlebugs*, so car 407 may not exactly be the highlight. It's also not unique: of the five cars built in this series, three are still around. These include car 409, on indoor display near Rochester, New York, and car 411, subject of a beautiful cosmetic restoration and recently placed on display under a shelter in Burleson, Texas.

*EDIT: Olin Anderson points out that one of the doodlebugs is a heavily rebuilt Philadelphia & Western "Strafford car" which is not on the PNAERC list due to how modified it is.