Charlotte 85 moved to Belmont

I'm a bit late on this one, but I came across a Facebook post from the Belmont Trolley group and noticed that a familiar-looking streetcar could be seen in the background. Sure enough, back on January 3rd of this year, Southern Public Utilities 85, the only preserved streetcar from Charlotte, NC, was moved to a new home in Belmont, NC. The photo above is from the Belmont Trolley Facebook page.

Charlotte 85 was built in 1927 and ran until retirement in 1938, at which point its body was sold. In 1993 the car body was retrieved by the Charlotte Trolley group, restored using trucks and electrical parts salvaged from Melbourne streetcars, and put into service (using a towed generator) on a short stretch of track in Charlotte. The right-of-way was later subsumed into the Charlotte light rail line, and for a brief period car 85 shared the light rail tracks, but at some point it was taken out of service and put into storage. In March 2016 it was sent to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer.

In Belmont, it's currently stored in the city's public works building (along with two foreign single-truckers, an Oporto car and a Greek car that is itself another refugee from Charlotte Trolley). The plans are to rebuild it with some sort of battery-powered system so that it can run on a short tourist line on the north side of town. Car 85 has had its ownership updated and I've added Belmont Trolley to the PNAERC database, as this is their first domestic electric car acquisition.

For its part, NCTM in Spencer is still home to two electrics on the list - the P&N boxcab locomotive and a New Orleans streetcar in storage - as well as this thing, which is not currently on the list due to a lack of information on it.

Mystery Body in Spencer

Here's our latest mystery car. Matthew Gustafson recently snapped the above photo of a car body - or what's left of it - in the "back 40" at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. I haven't been able to find any information at all about the car. It appears to be, or have been, a single-truck arch-roof car with doors at all four corners and six windows per side. To my eye it has a bit of a Southern Car Company or Perley-Thomas look to it but it's hard to say. If the car is from a relatively local system that would make sense, as those two companies were located nearby in High Point. And Southern did build similar single-truck cars for Southern Public Utilities, which ran the system in nearby Salisbury for a time (a photo here of one of the SPU cars even shows that odd single-bar window guard like the Spencer body has).

Then of course there's the question "is this thing actually preserved?" As poor as its condition is, I have a policy of putting any electric car owned by a railway museum on the list, even if it's not currently accessioned and even if it seems forgotten. You never know when priorities may shift and that cadaver out back might go into the shop for a paint job. And, you know, a roof. But if I haven't the first clue what the identity of the car is then I don't have enough to add it to the list. You can help!

UPDATE: Thanks to Wesley Paulson and Dave Lathrop, who have provided information indicating that this car came to NCTM many years ago after a period of storage at the Salisbury depot. Local legend has it that the car did indeed run in Salisbury but there doesn't seem to be much documentation of that, as photos of Salisbury cars mainly show Birneys and double-truck cars. Anyone have any photos from Salisbury that might show these pre-Birney arch-roof single-truckers in use there?