Portland Traction line car scrapped

It was, perhaps, inevitable: Portland Traction 1058, the wooden line car pictured above (Dave's Rail Pix photo) when it was still in service in the 1950s, has been scrapped in Snoqualmie, Washington by the Northwest Railway Museum. It is a significant loss from an historical standpoint, albeit probably unavoidable at this late date. The car began life as an interurban coach built by Niles in 1903 for Jersey City Traction, making it the last existing interurban car from the state of New Jersey. It didn't stay in the Garden State long though; in 1906 it was sold to Oregon Water Power as its car 58, later becoming Portland Railway Light & Power 1058. In 1929 it was rebuilt as a line car and lasted in that form until the end of electric service on Portland Traction in 1958. When it was retired, it was complete and in reasonably good shape, but it was sold to an individual who moved it to a siding in the Snoqualmie rain forest near the Northwest Railway Museum. There among the trees it mouldered for sixty years until the car, and a couple of others on the same siding, was donated to NWRM. Car 1058 was judged too far gone to save and has now been scrapped, with its Brill 27 trucks and GE Type M control equipment going to the Oregon Electric Railway Historical Society in Brooks, Oregon. Thanks to David Johnston for the update.

UPDATE: A photo taken of this car in August 2018 can be found here. A very unfortunate loss!

SECOND UPDATE: It seems that final disassembly of this car didn't take place until May 2019, when many of its mechanical components were removed and what was left of the car's body was finally disposed of. Either way, it's gone now.

Yakima car extracted from the rain forest

Thanks to Olin Anderson for passing along news out of the Northwest Railway Museum: Yakima Valley Traction 20, the 1930 Master Unit that has been "lost" in the Snoqualmie rain forest for nearly six decades, has been extracted and sent by truck back to its home city. Its condition is, admittedly, wretched. Besides having suffered very serious deterioration to its body and interior, the car suffered the indignity of having a tree fall on it and stove in the body over one bolster. It is going to the Yakima Electric Railway Museum, which occupies the old YVT shop site, to join sister cars 21 and 22. What the museum's plans for this car might be, I'm not sure.

The departure of car 20 leaves three privately-owned electric cars on or near Northwest Railway Museum property in Snoqualmie. All of them have suffered grievously from decades of neglect and the ravages of the rainy local climate. The worst of the three is Pacific Northwest Traction 60, a wooden interurban car body stored back in the woods on the same track as YVT 20. Also on that track, and visible in the background in one of the photos on the NWRM's post about YVT 20, is Portland Traction 1058, a wooden line car which was complete when retired. Then located out of the woods and in or near the NWRM yard is BCER S103, a wooden steeplecab converted into a snow plow which suffered a frame collapse a few years back. What will become of these three pieces is anyone's guess.

Puget Sound Electric car donated

The last surviving car from the Puget Sound Electric in Washington, car 523 (St. Louis, 1907) has been donated the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie. Earlier this week it was trucked from Petaluma, California, where it had been privately owned by Paul Class and stored with the Petaluma Trolley collection, to Snoqualmie. The news comes from the Snoqualmie Valley Record.

Car 523 is the only survivor from the PSE. Its post-preservation history is a little uncertain, to me at least. It was retired early, in 1929, and thereafter served as a yard office on the Tacoma Municipal Belt for some period. Eventually it was acquired by Paul Class and I think was located in Glenwood, Oregon for a time before making its way to Petaluma a decade or so ago. Any further information on this car's history in the last few decades would be appreciated.

As for NWRM, this is the only electric car of theirs currently on the PNAERC roster but they have been involved obliquely with traction preservation for decades. For a time in the 1980s and 1990s they owned a Kennecott Copper steeplecab, but that was cut up in 2000. And a private collection of several electric cars in various stages of collapse is located just off of NWRM property with a track connection to the museum's line. These cars are listed on the roster under private ownership.