Boston Snow Plow Scrapped

Many thanks to Jordan Helzer for confirming that Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority 5122, a snow plow converted from a Type 3 semi-convertible built in 1908, has been scrapped. As noted here, the car was preserved at the Seashore Trolley Museum from 1995 to 2020 but that year it was sold (sans trucks, which were retained) to the Samuel Slater Experience in Webster, MA. This newly opened museum needed a streetcar for static display and 5122 was the first one chosen (the image above, showing the car being craned onto a truck for transport, is from Seashore's 2020 annual report).

Within months of acquiring the car, however, Samuel Slater Experience acquired a second car. This one, a heavily rebuilt Los Angeles Railway single-trucker, is far from local but was acquired in more-or-less complete condition and with an excellent cosmetic appearance. It has since been installed in the museum's building in Webster. I had tried reaching out to SSE to inquire about car 5122, with no luck, but Jordan has found that the plow's body has indeed been cut up. It has now been removed from the PNAERC roster.

This is not a huge loss. There are five other Type 3 cars still in existence, all of them at Seashore, including one or two that were much less heavily rebuilt than 5122 and at least one that in recent years has been kept in operational condition and used regularly as a switching locomotive.

Plow leaves Seashore

It came to my attention recently that MBTA 5122, one of several Boston snow plows converted from Type 3 semiconvertibles to have been acquired by the Seashore Trolley Museum, was sold last year. The above photo from here shows the car in 2010 and it wasn't in the best shape then, so it's not too hard to see why Seashore would be willing to let it go. It's the first electric car deaccessed by Seashore since they sent their Cleveland trailer to Northern Ohio in 2010.

Car 5122 was built by St. Louis in 1908 and was later rebuilt as a snow plow. It was one of six of these plows that made their way to Seashore, with most arriving in the 1990s and 2000s. This one showed up in Kennebunkport in 1995 and I'm not sure whether it ever ran at Seashore, but it was out of service for years (one or two of the other Type 3 snow plows in the collection are regular work cars and locomotives at the museum).

It was sold last year to the Samuel Slater Experience, the new museum in Webster, Massachusetts that only recently showed up on the PNAERC list as described here. Many thanks to Tom Tello for confirming this for me. As near as I can tell, SSE decided at some point that they needed a streetcar for their museum but it seems they've changed course once or twice deciding how best to accomplish that. This video on Facebook (no login required) is from November 2019 and describes efforts to have a replica streetcar built by a contractor. By mid-2020, it appears they had instead decided to acquire car 5122 from Seashore. And by October 2020, they were the proud owners of a Los Angeles Railway single-trucker in need of little or no restoration work.

I tried contacting the Webster museum but nobody got back to me, so I don't know what their plans are for 5122. Perhaps it will be restored and put elsewhere in the museum, or perhaps its role has been filled by the LARy car. If anyone finds out where it is and what its owners are doing with it, please let me know. In the meantime, on the PNAERC list its ownership has been updated and its status has been changed to "unknown."

EDIT: This car has been scrapped, as described here.

Los Angeles car turns up in Massachusetts

While looking for something else, I stumbled across this interesting link about Los Angeles Railway 57. You will recall that three years ago now, as described here, car 57 was put up for sale by the Poway-Midland in Poway, California. The history of this car is uncertain but as near as I can figure it was built in 1894 as LARy 54 and was later used as "material car" 9306. It's been questionably restored but still retains a lot of original material, including an ultra-rare McGuire single truck of some sort.

Anyway, last September it crossed the continent and wound up at the Samuel Slater Experience, a brand new "living history" museum in Webster, Massachusetts south of Worcester. There's a video of the car being put in its display spot here (Facebook link, no log-in required). From the SSE website, it looks like this car is being used to represent local streetcars and apparently visitors can go for a "ride" complete with the car rocking back and forth a bit while a movie plays outside the windows. It sounds kind of interesting. Regardless, SSE has now been added to the PNAERC list as a new owner (supplanting Poway-Midland, which no longer owns any electric cars) and car 57's record has been updated.