Minnesota Streetcar Museum updates

Many thanks to Aaron Isaacs, who has sent along some updates regarding the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. First off, the organization has swapped two of its restored streetcars. Duluth Street Railway 265 (pictured above in an MSM photo), which for many years has operated at MSM's Como-Harriet line, was just recently moved a few miles away to the organization's Excelsior streetcar line. In turn, Twin City Rapid Transit 1239, which was the subject of a major restoration effort completed in 2004, was moved from its longtime home at Excelsior to the Como-Harriet site. This very neatly groups all three of the organization's TCRT cars together in TCRT territory at Como-Harriet while the four cars at Excelsior are non-TCRT equipment: two Duluth cars (car 265 joins considerably older Duluth car 78), recently-restored Winona 10, and MSM's only interurban car, Mesaba Railway 10.

Aaron also states that the Mesaba car will be the subject of some stabilization and cosmetic restoration attention in the very near future. The plan is to place it on correct-type curved-equalizer MCB trucks acquired some years back from Japan, complete a basic exterior cosmetic restoration, and open the interior of the car for walk-through exhibit. Other current projects at MSM include a major overhaul of car 1239's trucks, which are ex-CTA 'L' car trucks that are being modified to more closely resemble the Baldwin #5 trucks the car originally had, and some motor work on car 1300 and Winona 10. Both of those cars will be running in 2019.

Winona streetcar in service

More good news comes from the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and in particular from MSM's Excelsior site. It appears that Winona 10, subject of a restoration project stretching back over more than a decade, has been completed and cleared for public service. The car ran for the Heritage Rail Alliance meeting a couple of weeks ago and a photo (above) is now featured on the MSM website. As such, its condition has been appropriately updated in the PNAERC roster.

This is just the most recent of MSM's "chicken coop" restorations, joining Duluth 78 and Twin Cities 1239 (both also located at Excelsior) in that distinction. In fact, MSM now has fewer unrestored car bodies than restored ones, an admirable accomplishment! The Winona car was rebuilt using a truck acquired from Trolleyville that originally came from Lancaster, Ohio. It's what I would consider a pre-Birney single-trucker, meaning not simply that it was built before the Birney but that it's a transition design with an arched roof and steel or semi-steel construction. There aren't a lot of examples of these around and I think that this car may be the only one currently operational.