Cleveland Transit System 109 Runs

Congratulations to the Northern Ohio Railway Museum on getting their fourth car, and second passenger car, running. They announced on their Facebook page (no log-in required) that Cleveland Transit System 109 was made operational under its own power this week for the first time since arriving at NORM in 2013. The photo above is from the museum's Facebook post. Car 109's status has been updated in the PNAERC roster.

CTS 109 is one of 18 single-unit "Bluebird" cars built for the opening of the system's heavy rail rapid transit line in 1955 by St. Louis Car Company (there were also 35 married-pair sets of largely identical cars in the 200-series). Three of the single-unit cars still exist: 112, which has been at NORM for 35 years and is complete but deteriorated; 113, an ex-Trolleyville car now at Seashore in similar condition; and car 109. This example, by far the nicest of the preserved "Bluebirds," was retained by its home system as a historic car and was stored in good repair under Terminal Tower for many years. It came to NORM in 2013 along with two of the museum's other three operating cars, Shaker Heights historic car 12 and Shaker Heights line car 024. And kudos to NORM on their plan to retain 109's pantograph (though it will need to be raised) rather than replacing it with trolley poles.

RIP GRER

It's been quite a while since I wrote a post but I have indeed been updating the new PNAERC site. One of several changes made in recent months is the closing out of listings for the Grand Rapids Electric Railway of Grand Rapids, Ohio. The GRER was the successor to the Waterfront Electric Railway, both of them owned (or at least managed) by Charley Sheets. Starting nearly 20 years ago Charley began downsizing his collection, which at the time was mostly stored inside a barn located in Grand Rapids at the west end of the Toledo Lake Erie & Western tourist railroad. I recall being shown inside the barn around 1998; it was an interesting and fairly eclectic collection at the time.

Most of the collection ended up at the Northern Ohio Railway Museum but one steeplecab went to the local history museum in Sylvania, Ohio and two pieces of equipment remained stored in the barn. These two, a CTA 4000 that underwent some rehab work at some point years ago and a Philadephia double-truck sweeper that had been regauged by the Ohio Railway Museum prior to its sale to GRER, were transferred to the Toledo Lake Erie & Western and GRER has - apparently - ceased to exist. Evidently this transfer actually took place in 2014 but it took me until earlier this year before I realized it. Anyway, the snow sweeper (C-124) is being scrapped with the parts going to Scranton (or so I'm told) while CTA 4439 is being kept around by the TLE&W for some undetermined future use.

I may as well also note that the TLE&W was already on the PNAERC list, as it owns a pair of ex-New York Central heavyweight MU cars as well as an unidentified (and hence not listed) ex-DL&W MU car. Anyone know the number of the Lackawanna MU car on the TLE&W?