Open Car Off the List

Thanks to Murphy Jenkins of the Fort Smith Trolley Museum for confirming that Veracruz single-truck open car 6, which had been listed as being in a state of disassembly, has been permanently disassembled and can be considered to be gone. Components from the car are going into identical car 9, which is expected to be made operational (I believe converted to double-end operation) at FSTM. I would guess that parts will also make it into other restoration projects at FSTM, which is a bit unusual in that nearly all of their (now nine-car) collection is single-truckers.

Car 6 was built in 1908 by Brill and retired in the mid-1960s, after which it spent a few decades under the ownership of the Texas Transportation Museum, where I believe its condition declined significantly before it went to FSTM in the mid-1990s. There are now three Veracruz single-truck open cars remaining: besides car 9, an ex-Trolleyville car acquired by FSTM in 2009, there's "car 001" (formerly car 8) on display under a very nice pavilion in its home city and car 19, another ex-Trolleyville resident which is in regular operation at the Illinois Railway Museum. Both of the other two cars were backdated by re-adding original-style deck roofs, so car 9 is the only one of the trio preserved in its later arch-roof guise.

South Shore trailers scrapped

Robert MacDowell from the Southern Michigan Railway e-mailed me to confirm that the two South Shore interurban trailers in French Lick, Indiana at the Indiana Railway Museum have indeed been scrapped. The cars in question were 204 and 206, built by Pullman in 1927 and lengthened by the South Shore later in life. These were the only two electric cars owned by "the other IRM" so it's no longer a current owner on the PNAERC list. The number of surviving South Shore 200-series coach trailers is thus reduced from four to two, with one at East Troy and one stored in rough shape in Noblesville, Indiana still extant.

In happier news, I've also updated Hot Spring Street Railway 50 at the Fort Smith Trolley Museum. It's no longer "undergoing restoration" but is now in regular service, having been formally dedicated back in May (I was obviously a little slow on the uptake on this one). The restoration took 16 years and involved rebuilding the car from a body, always an impressive accomplishment.