Highliners scrapped

Thanks to Les Beckman for notifying me that the two Metra (ex-Illinois Central) "Highliner" MU cars at the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum, 1502 and 1529, have been scrapped. These were two of the four "Highliners" acquired by HVRM in 2008 but they never really fit in at the museum and I believe they turned out to be less well-suited to display use than anticipated. The other pair, 1521 and 1617, were scrapped back in 2010. The remaining pair were offered to other museums earlier this year but found no takers. This is not a big historic loss; there are four "Highliners" preserved at IRM, six at the Boone & Scenic Valley, and 10 of the cars at the Museum of the American Railroad in Texas. As for HVRM, their traction collection is now down to a single Lackawanna MU car and a pair of privately-owned South Shore cars stored on their property.

Highliners for sale

The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in Indiana announced on Facebook (no log-in required) that it is deaccessing its two Metra, ex-Illinois Central, "Highliner" MU cars. Cars 1502 and 1529, both from the first order for Highliners built by St. Louis in 1971, were retired around 2007 and were acquired by HVRM in 2008. The museum actually bought four of the double-deck cars but the other two, 1521 and 1617, were scrapped not long afterwards in 2010.

This group Highliners to be retired back in 2007 included cars Metra wanted to retire first, and HVRM has suggested that it's unlikely 1502 and 1529 will leave on their own wheels (though they arrived that way), so the two cars up for sale are likely not in great condition. Presumably they will end up being scrapped. I'm not exactly sure why HVRM acquired them in the first place but Highliners were snapped up by a few different organizations including the Mendota Railroad Museum, Boone & Scenic Valley, and the Museum of the American Railroad, apparently because they were cheap and plentiful. The only museums that have Highliners and are capable of running them are Boone and IRM and only the latter has actually operated its cars.

Last Electric Car Leaves Forest Park

The last electric car has officially departed Forest Park and the old Indiana Transportation Museum site, drawing to a close 50 years of traction preservation at that site. The dubious honor went to Lackawanna 4328, a standard high-roof MU trailer built in 1917, which was acquired by the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum. At HVRM it joins two much newer mainline MU cars, Illinois Central "Highliners," as well as a pair of privately-owned South Shore coaches. There are still three electric cars owned by ITM on the PNAERC roster, all of them Lackawanna MU cars identical to 4328 (except that they're in much worse condition), but they're stored on a siding in Cicero, Indiana to the north of Noblesville. Rumor has it that the owner of that siding - recall that ITM has never owned a square foot of land, so even the equipment they own that wasn't seized by the city of Noblesville is on land owned by someone else - has sued ITM so those cars may be leaving at some point in the near future as well. Of course there's plenty of steam road equipment still in Forest Park too, but that collection has begun to leave as well, starting with an L&N diner moved to Tennessee this week.

ITM started out as the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication, or IMOTAC, and initially its collection was heavily traction-oriented. The organization's first car, whose acquisition predated the move to Forest Park by a few years, was Chicago Aurora & Elgin 308; public operation was for many years limited to electric cars; and during the museum's first decade only a few pieces of mainline railroad equipment were obtained. But by the early 1980s, with the ability to operate over the old Nickel Plate mainline into Indianapolis and the leasing of NKP Mikado 587, the focus changed to running mainline steam and diesel excursions. The most successful and long-lasting of these were the Fair Trains to the state fairgrounds and by the early 2000s the museum's preservation mission had largely become secondary to maintaining the Fair Train operation. The last electric car ran around 1999 and after that the traction collection languished until the museum lost its lease on the land in the park last year. Offers by the city of Noblesville to give ITM a year to evacuate were met by lawsuits and an eviction notice was served in July. ITM as an organization still exists, with some equipment in poor condition in Cicero and a few other pieces extracted in early July scattered around the state, but it is gone from Forest Park forever.