Silverliner Preserved

When interurban fans think of Silverliners, they're picturing this beauty and its ilk. But the Silverliner that's the subject of today's post is a bit more homely, albeit also significantly higher capacity, at least when it comes to seating.

The Reading Company Technical & Historical Society has announced on Facebook that Reading 9001, a "Silverliner II" electric commuter coach, has been acquired for preservation from SEPTA. The car was built by Budd in 1963 using grant money and was in service until 2012. Apparently, SEPTA has been holding onto it for about a dozen years for the purpose of preservation, but finally put it up for sale - and the RCT&HS purchased it. Since 2019, the car has been stored at Frazer, as shown above, but the plan is to move it shortly to the society's site in Hamburg. It's now been added to the PNAERC list.

Car 9001 is a behemoth, at 85' long, roughly 101,000 lbs., and seating 124 people. It began life with mercury arc rectifiers but these were later changed to silicon diode rectifiers. It also has a late-1980s vintage transformer that replaced its original PCB model. While far from the newest heavy rail commuter EMU car preserved - the ex-IC Highliners and the handful of preserved "Metropolitan" type cars from the New York era date to the early 1970s - car 9001 does have the distinction of being the most modern car from the Philadelphia area currently on the PNAERC list. For now, it's still listed under SEPTA ownership, but it will be moved over to RCT&HS ownership as soon as it rolls into Hamburg. Many thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski for alerting me to this one!

New Hope & Ivyland updates

While I was looking for something else, I stumbled upon a couple of photos that shed light on recent changes involving the New Hope & Ivyland steam tourist line in Pennsylvania. The first is that Reading MU car 870 - which heretofore has been known as SEPTA 9125, its post-rebuild "Blueliner" era number - is now in service after having been rebuilt by the NH&I. It appears they're using it as a cab car for backing up their trains, which it's obviously pretty well suited for. This car was on the wire train based out of Wayne Junction for many years, so I suspect it was stripped of a lot of its interior before it ever came to the NH&I. The Tim Darnell photo above, taken several decades ago in January 2020, is from here. Its status has been updated to "towed inoperable" which is what I use for cars like this that are in use, but not really operational per se, at least not as electrics.

And then there's a second Reading MU car, SEPTA 9123, shown in photos here and here at the NH&I. The photos, taken this past May and June, describe the car as "newly arrived" which makes sense since last I knew, it was in Hamburg, PA as part of the Reading Tech collection. Its ownership has been updated from the Reading group (which, according to my list, still has nine of these cars) to the NH&I.

MU cars confirmed scrapped

Thanks to Mike Dodge, who wrote to me to confirm that Lackawanna MU cars 4351 and 4359 (discussed here) have indeed been scrapped. I'm not sure exactly when they were cut up but it was likely a few years ago. Regardless, while they had been stored at the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society site in Hamburg, PA the cars were apparently actually owned by the Reading & Northern. The R&N owns a sizable fleet of these cars used in locomotive-hauled excursion service so this pair was presumably judged to be too far gone and stripped for parts. Needless to say, this is no great historic loss as a lot of these "high roof trailers" are still around. These two examples have now been removed from the PNAERC list and the RCT&HS is back to an all-Reading collection.

Another mystery

Once again I'm trying to clear up some of the unknowns on the PNAERC roster. Today's focus is on a pair of Lackawanna MU cars that, until five or six years ago at least, were in Hamburg, PA at the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society site. Cars 4351 and 4359 are (were?) standard high-roof trailers like so many others at other museums and tourist lines. As of 2013, though, it appears that both cars were taken off their trucks as shown in the above photo by Michael Huber. My guess is that they were stripped of parts and scrapped but I haven't been able to confirm this, so they've stayed on the PNAERC roster pending confirmation. Can anyone answer whether these two cars are indeed gone?
UPDATE: This mystery has been solved!

Reading MU car move

I've managed to track down another electric car that changes hands a couple of years ago and bring its record (hopefully) up-to-date. Reading 9127, one of a couple of dozen "Blueliner" MU cars preserved, was evidently sold by the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society to the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway back around 2016. The photo above, taken in late 2016, shows the car after rebuilding and repainting by LGSR. That line now has six of these MU cars and they've made fairly substantial modifications to them including removal of most underbody equipment and virtually all rooftop equipment including the headlight fairings. But these aren't exactly an endangered species and several are preserved in basically original condition.

Reading MU car moves

I happened upon the photo above (from Railroad Picture Archives here) of Reading MU trailer 774, which until recently was in Jim Thorpe, PA. This was one of four identical MU trailers acquired in 1976 by Rail Tours for use as locomotive-hauled coaches and was apparently acquired by Rail Tours' successor in Jim Thorpe, Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway, in 2005. Sometime within the past couple of years this car has shown up in Hamburg at the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society's museum. Hence, its ownership has been changed.

All four of those Rail Tours MU trailers are still around, or at least they were last I knew. One is in Stewartstown PA on the Stewartstown Railroad and the other two appear to be in dead storage on the California Western at Fort Bragg, California way out on the west coast.

Reading Blueliners

There are quite a few - thirteen, to be precise - of the old Reading MU cars on the PNAERC list that are, or were, owned by the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society. Most of these I didn't have out-of-service dates or RCT&HS acquisition dates for, but I've uncovered some cryptic references online to 1993 as the year that SEPTA sold these cars off. So I've added that year (noted with a question mark as uncertain) to the ownership histories of these cars.

But I could still use some more information. A few of the Reading cars that weren't rebuilt into 9000-series "Blueliners" are preserved, including one (car 863) owned by the RCT&HS, and I have no idea when that car was acquired by the Society. There are also some cars that were formerly owned by Rail Tours in Jim Thorpe and sold to other railroads, including the Lehigh Gorge Scenic and the California Western, for which I'm missing dates of sale.