North Shore car removed from list

Thanks to Justin Birchfield, who posted the above photo (and a few others) online recently depicting the current sad status of Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 154. This car is/was the oldest extant North Shore Line passenger car, part of the line's first order for steel cars placed in 1915 with Brill. It ran until the NSL was abandoned in 1963 and then spent about four years traveling around Indiana on railroad excursions organized by the Anderson Railroad Club. Around 1967 it went to the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington, where it was made operational and for roughly a decade saw regular use.

But ORM's fortunes began declining quickly after a membership schism in 1975 and car 154 was one of the victims. Its condition had deteriorated badly by the early 2000s and it was put up for sale by ORM in 2004. There were a few on-again, off-again deals to sell it but it wasn't until the Grass Lake Historical Society in Grass Lake, Michigan stepped in during 2016 that the car actually left Worthington. That year it was moved to Grass Lake, stripped for parts for Michigan Electric 29, and the body dumped on private property outside of town. In 2017 the GLHS transferred car 29, and presumably car 154 as well, to the Lost Railway Museum.

While car 154 has remained on PNAERC, at this point - given the time that has passed since it was parted out and the obviously quite thorough job that was done of stripping the car - it doesn't seem like the car stands any better chance of ultimate preservation than any other car body abandoned on private land. As such, I've decided to remove it from the PNAERC list.

Lost Railway Museum grows

For a brief period in recent years the tiny hamlet of Grass Lake, Michigan had the unusual distinction of containing two separate traction preservation groups. First came the local historical society, which in 2013 retrieved the body of Michigan Electric 29, a 1913 steel interurban car, from a nearby house and put it into storage. Then a couple of years later came the Lost Railway Museum, a dueling group, which acquired the recently-discovered body of Chicago Surface Lines 1137 from a family in Wisconsin and painted it up as a Michigan United Traction car.

That situation is now no more. Thanks to Wesley Paulson, who took time to look into recent developments in Grass Lake, this article from last September came to light describing how the Grass Lake Historical Society has transferred ownership of car 29 (and the remnants of the long-suffering North Shore 154) to the Lost Railway Museum. The native car has even been painted in Michigan Electric colors and moved into the LRM display building, where car 1137 is already housed, as shown above. Ownership of both cars has been updated in the PNAERC database.

This seems like good news. Car 29 is obviously in the midst of a cosmetic restoration that seems to be progressing nicely. It's apparently been placed on South Shore interurban trucks and will be displayed alongside the ex-CSL streetcar and alongside a San Diego horsecar acquired late last year. As for car 154, its current status isn't entirely clear; as of early 2017 the stripped shell of the car was still in Grass Lake awaiting possible interest from an outside group but it may have been cut up since. Oddly, both 154 and 29 have sister cars preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum; North Shore 160 is in operational condition while Michigan Electric 28 is undergoing a major rebuilding effort. Another classmate of car 154, North Shore 162, is extant in Connecticut but is in poor condition and has been offered for sale.

Chicago "Matchbox" painted as Jackson, MI car

One of the newest organizations in traction preservation is the Lost Railway Museum of Grass Lake, Michigan. This tiny hamlet is home to two apparently unrelated traction history organizations, LRM and the town historical society. The latter owns the body of a Michigan Electric interurban combine, 29 (identical car 28 is under restoration at the Illinois Railway Museum) while LRM acquired its first car in 2016. This is an ex-Chicago "Matchbox" streetcar, CSL 1137, previously CSL 1288. Car 1137 was on display when LRM opened its new, and fairly impressive, display hall to the public earlier this summer. But there's a twist: the car is in the process of being painted as Michigan United Traction 47, a virtually identical car that once ran in Jackson, MI but is long gone. The Chicago "Matchboxes" were a standard St. Louis Car Company design that was sold to a number of different street railway companies including the systems in both Chicago and Jackson. So car 1137 does make a good stand-in for MUT 47. It remains to be seen how far the restoration of this car progresses. The car's record in PNAERC has been updated to reflect its new identity and status on public display.

Chicago streetcar history

Today's update includes some changes to the record for Chicago Surface Lines 1137, a body which was rescued in 2016 by the recently-formed Lost Railway Museum in Grass Lake, Michigan. Following some research, and backed up by photos posted online, it's been established that car 1137 was renumbered by the CSL in 1937 and before that was car 1288 (originally Chicago Union Traction 4817 when built by St. Louis in 1905). Intriguingly, that means that of the three "Matchboxes" of this type preserved, no two were built as part of the same order. The car in Michigan is the "middle child," having been built early in 1905 on SLCC order 541, while CSL 1278 preserved as a body in Wisconsin was built a year earlier on order 452A and fully-restored car 1374 at the Illinois Railway Museum was built late in 1905 on order 715. Obscure information, but it's always gratifying to be able to add these sorts of details to the PNAERC roster to make it more accurate.