Trenton Sweeper Moves

Thanks to Bill Wall and Wesley Paulson for sending me updates of recent news on the last surviving piece of equipment from the Trenton & Mercer County, New Jersey Transit 5246, a snow sweeper built by Russell in 1921.

Today, the sweeper was moved from its recent storage location at the Bloomfield NJT light rail shops to Titusville, NJ (above photo by Bill Wall). There, its new owner, Liberty Historic Railway, has an indoor storage location arranged for it (I'm not clear on why the sweeper has been boat-wrapped - I guess extra insurance?). This piece of equipment has had quite the tumultuous couple of decades. I'm not sure when it was last used by NJT, or when it last ran, but in 2011 it was moved from the Newark subway system to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum for storage. It remained there until 2020, when it went back to NJT and was stored outside at the Bloomfield facility. As far as I know, it's been owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society during this period, but it is now owned by LHR. As the last surviving T&MC piece of equipment, it's quite historically significant.

Its condition is, shall we say, unusual. That's because it's really "a tale of two sweepers" in a single car body. The photos above and below were posted a week ago by NJERHS. The first two photos show one end of 5246, looking like it's almost ready to "put the pole up and go," as they say...

...and then there's the other end of the sweeper, where the roof has failed and partially caved in, among other structural issues. We've all seen cars where a leak in one spot caused localized deterioration, but I don't think I've ever seen quite such a night-and-day difference between two ends of the same car as here. I assume that half of it was tarped and half wasn't, or maybe one end was under a downspout off a building or something. Anyway, LHR has their work cut out for them. That group is back up to two cars on the PNAERC list, while NJT itself is down to one car, PSCT 28 - but I'm actually not certain who owns that car, and it's not on NJT property, it's a "gate guardian" at the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway.

Open car removed from list

I found out this past weekend from a Liberty Historic Railway volunteer that Five Mile Beach Electric 20, a double-truck open car body that had been stored for many years in a warehouse in Wildwood, New Jersey, is no more. I knew the car had been acquired in 2019 by LHR and had been shipped to Gomaco in Iowa for evaluation, but hadn't heard anything more. As it turns out, the car's condition was bad enough that it partially collapsed en route, and the remains were dismantled. The car has been removed from the PNAERC list, leaving just a single car owned by LHR and a total of 2,085 cars on the list overall.

Five Mile Beach Electric open car to be restored

From this press release comes the news that Five Mile Beach Electric 20, one of four open cars preserved from the FMBE and the only one currently in "car body" condition, has been donated by former owner Wildwood Trolley to Liberty Historic Railway. The former organization acquired the car something like 25-30 years ago and since then had stored it in a building in Wildwood, but early plans to restore the car collapsed and it had simply been in dead storage for many years. The car hasn't just been donated to LHR, however: that organization has shipped it to Gomaco in Iowa to be restored. The scope of the rebuild isn't clear from the press release - it's not obvious whether this is intended to be an operational restoration or a more limited cosmetic one - but it's very encouraging that significant resources are being put into this car. Many thanks to Bill Wall for bringing this to my attention.

LHR has now expanded its collection of streetcars from zero to two in a matter of months, having acquired the body of Trenton Street Railway 288 - a rare car which makes FMBE 20 look like a gem - in late 2018. Car 288, which is fairly significant, has been stabilized and tarped. Car 20 is also pretty historic in its own right and stands to be the only FMBE car preserved in the Garden State.

UPDATE: This article was posted on February 1st in the Cape May County Herald stating that some $300,000 had been donated towards the restoration of FMBE 20 and, moreover, that LHR's plan is for an operational restoration of car 20. Evidently the intention is to operate it at an as-yet-nonexistent railway museum in Boonton, the current home of the United Railroad Historical Society.

Trenton streetcar body moved

There have been a few developments with Trenton Street Railway 288, the streetcar body that was unearthed from inside of a house a couple of months ago. According to a Facebook post (no log-in required), yesterday the car was trucked out of its former location in Hamilton, NJ and moved to a temporary storage location. It's been confirmed that it's owned by Liberty Historic Railway but that organization's previously announced plans to send the car to Iowa to be rebuilt have apparently been put on hold. However plans to preserve and, possibly, restore car 288 have not been abandoned.

Trenton Streetcar to be Preserved

Against all odds, it would appear that the decrepit husk of the last surviving Trenton streetcar is headed for preservation and perhaps even restoration. Trenton Street Railway 288 - as of today added to the PNAERC roster - was discovered this fall while a house in Hamilton, New Jersey was being demolished. Buried within the structure of the house, and hidden by wall paneling for decades, was the body of a 1914 Brill-built deck-roof streetcar. Both platforms are gone, as is the entire interior including walls and ceiling, but examination of exterior paneling revealed the car's number.

While there's not much left to this car, it is historic as the last streetcar from New Jersey's capital city and one of very, very few non-Newark/PSCT streetcars from the Garden State to survive. A News 12 story now says that car 288 is going to be shipped to Iowa, presumably to Gomaco, for a restoration to be funded by an organization called Liberty Historic Railway. I confess I'd never heard of LHR but they've funded a number of restoration projects in their home state including a few ship and bus restorations. They've got their work cut out for them with Trenton 288 but if they can make this sow's ear into a silk purse it will be a truly remarkable transformation.