Union Traction 429 Runs

This news has been pretty widely disseminated, but I finally got around to updating the PNAERC list. Union Traction 429 ran for the first time a few weeks ago, moving a few feet on a (very) short piece of track laid inside its barn in Russiaville, Indiana. This is quite an impressive feat given that the car was acquired by its current owner, Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company, in 2018 as a car body, and given that HHTC has pretty minimal facilities to work with by most museums' standards. But the organization has a very dedicated group of people all concentrating on this one car, and the results are apparent.

Intriguingly, car 429 is no longer on the correct-type C80P trucks it had when it left its former home, the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville, in 2018. It's now on generally similar C60 trucks from CRANDIC 55, which was scrapped for parts in 2019. Car 429 is running on two motors, and I'm guessing those may be WH 562D3's from the CRANDIC steeplecab, but I'm not sure. Anyway, there's plenty of work left to do on car 429, but the rapid pace of progress is commendable.

In unrelated news that I also happened to come across today, Los Angeles Railway 936 - shown above in a recent photo posted to Facebook by Murphy Zane Jenkins-Henson - appears to be the focus of a restoration effort at the Southern California Railway Museum, née Orange Empire. This is a center-entrance car built in 1914 by St. Louis and known on LARy as a "Sowbelly." Though one of three surviving, all car bodies, this is thought to be by far the best of the three. I'm not sure whether this is a cosmetic restoration or is the start of a full operational restoration; if the latter, it should be quite impressive, as this is one of the most distinctive LARy designs. Any information is appreciated.

Pacific Electric 1299 Runs

Thanks to a Facebook post from Dave Lessig (who also posted a video from which the above image is a frame grab), we have learned that the Southern California Railway Museum has made Pacific Electric 1299 operational for the first time since it left PE in 1956. Its condition has been updated in PNAERC appropriately.

Car 1299 is a unique and very historic piece of equipment. It was built as a trailer for the Portland Eugene & Eastern in Oregon and is the only complete survivor from that line. In 1929 it was sold to PE, which motorized it and rebuilt it into an "officer's car" for use by company officials. This included, among other things, tall solarium windows at both ends. It was used by PE until 1956 but was not sold to Metropolitan Coach Lines with the interurban system, and was apparently retained by PE for a little while. In 1958 it went to the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona, where it was maintained in good condition and kept as a display piece until 1998, when it went to its current home in Perris (then known as Orange Empire). It's been stored indoors at Perris but until now has never run. Congrats to the volunteers at SCRM who made this happen!

An orange by any other name...

 

A while back Chris Baldwin pointed out to me that the Orange Empire Railway Museum, which for several years has been slowly transitioning to a new name, had officially "switched over." It took me a while but I finally updated the PNAERC roster. So you'll no longer see Orange Empire listed among owners. It will now be the Southern California Railway Museum.

I've decided just to change the name of the organization (though OERM will still be listed under the "also known as" category in the organization's description). This means that searches for historical information may be slightly confusing. For instance, searching for equipment that is or was owned by SCRM brings up BCER 1225, which is listed as having belonged to SCRM from 1958 to 2005 despite the fact that the organization was known as OERM until the late 2010s and never owned car 1225 while it bore the SCRM name. But then again, OERM was actually known as the Orange Empire Trolley Museum until 1975 and I haven't listed the organization's equipment as all having changed hands at that time either.

When it comes to preservation organizations, I tend to just adopt "dba" name changes rather than creating new owners. Other examples of this are the Rockhill Trolley Museum, which used to be known as Railways to Yesterday, and the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, which used to be the Arden Trolley Museum. Both have just been carried forward with their new names - you can't run a search for equipment formerly owned by the Arden Trolley Museum. One exception to this is the Fox River Trolley Museum, which was known as RELIC until 1984. In that case I've listed those as two separate owners, the reason being that the transition from RELIC (Railway Equipment Leasing and Investment Corporation) to FRTM wasn't just a name change, it was a major organization shift from the for-profit, privately-held RELIC to the nonprofit museum FRTM.

Orange Empire updates

Many thanks to Chris Baldwin of the Orange Empire Railway Museum, who has sent a series of updates on their equipment. These are all changes from the previous status of the listed cars.

Recently-acquired LAMR 144, recently-overhauled LARy 525, and LARy PCC 3001 are all now listed as "operated occasionally." Muni 171 and LAMTA 3165, which in the past saw occasional use, are now "displayed operable." PE Birney 331, PE office car 1299, and LATL standard cars 1423, 1450, and 1559 are now officially out of service and are listed as "displayed inoperable" (formerly they'd been listed as "operated occasionally" or "displayed operable"). Similarly, PE "Blimp" 314 is now out of service but is in storage. LATL PCC 3100 and LARy 1201 are now seeing more use and the status of both cars has been changed to "operated often."

There are a few more substantive changes than switches to whether a car is judged operational or how often it operates. PE steeplecab 1624 is now undergoing restoration, starting with an interior paint job and some wiring and electrical systems repair. The locomotive has been in rough shape for years but it's complete and an excellent candidate for full restoration. LARy 665 is another car that is now under restoration; this longtime regular service car has gone into the shop for a general overhaul.

Longtime regular service car PE 717, a "Hollywood" car that for years was painted fancifully in a "Valley Seven" livery but was more recently returned to as-built colors, has been put into storage following an incident that caused some damage. The car is operational but requires repairs before going back into public operation. Marty Bernard photo.

And LA car 1435, shown above in a photo from about a year ago, has been sold to an individual and moved off-property for preservation. This car was acquired as a body and is a duplicate (triplicate?) of two other complete cars in the OERM collection so it was not intended to be kept at the museum. I'm working on tracking down where it went. UPDATE: thanks to John Smatlak and Gary Starre from OERM, who relate that car 1435 has been transferred to the Riverside County Fairgrounds in Indio, where the plan is to cosmetically restore it and place it on display. EDIT: Update here

Light rail cars at Orange Empire

Thanks to Chris Baldwin from the Orange Empire Railway Museum who sent some photos of that museum's collection of light rail cars. First, their most recent arrival: Los Angeles Metro Rail 144. Photo by Gary Starre.

And then a few photos of the museum's two San Diego U2 light rail cars: 1003, which arrived earlier this year, and 1008, which arrived in 2016.

And some of the Orange Empire volunteers that made the acquisition of the U2 cars possible.

Orange Empire is one of two museums now that has examples of two different types of light rail cars: they have the two U2s and the LAMR P865, while Rio Vista has a Boeing-Vertol LRV and two San Diego U2s of its own.

Los Angeles light rail car preserved

From Chris Baldwin of the Orange Empire Railway Museum comes news that Los Angeles P865 type light rail car 144 has been acquired by the museum. The car arrived in Perris earlier this week where it joins two Duewag-built U2 light rail cars. Per Chris, the preservation of this light rail car was spearheaded by Gary Starre and AJ Chier; the photo above is from a GoFundMe page set up to raise money.

Car 144 is the newest preserved car on the PNAERC list, its 1989 construction date beating out a pair of TTC work motors at Halton County by a year. It's the first car on the list built by Nippon Sharyo, a company which debuted in the U.S. traction market with interurban cars built in the mid-1980s for the South Shore line and are still in service. It's a P865, a type of light rail car built only for Los Angeles, and only the third distinct type of light rail car - after Boeing LRVs and Duewag U2s - in preservation. It's also a significant addition to the Orange Empire collection, as it was part of the original fleet of cars built for the first Los Angeles light rail line to Long Beach that opened in 1990.

I still need motor, truck, and brake information for the P865 - help?

Another San Diego U2 LRV added to the list

Perusing YouTube videos of trolley museums, as I occasionally do, I stumbled across a video showing a two-car (well, two-unit/four-car depending on how you look at it) train of San Diego LRVs in operation at Orange Empire just three months ago. Sure enough, I only had one of these cars on my list. Looks like it's time for another addition!

The new addition is San Diego 1003, one of the 1981-vintage U2 light rail cars that opened service on the San Diego light rail system and really helped to usher in the modern light rail renaissance. It joins identical car 1008, which was acquired by Orange Empire in 2016. I'm not exactly sure when OERM acquired car 1003; I visited in January 2018 and didn't see it, but I confess that I saw one of these light rail cars from afar and didn't walk over to see it (I'm personally a fan of older equipment - though that doesn't say much in this case) so I very likely just missed seeing it. Anyone know when it showed up? EDIT: Thanks to Bill Wulfert for pointing out that the car arrived in March 2018!

Anyhow, this makes the sixth San Diego U2 to be preserved, at least as far as I know. Besides the two cars at Orange Empire there are two at Rio Vista, one at Rockhill Trolley Museum in Pennsylvania, and the very first car, 1001, is apparently being preserved by the San Diego transit system itself. Although they're modern LRVs by overall design concept these cars are mostly free of computers and use camshaft control, so they'll likely be easier to keep running in the long term than newer cars. Or so the aforementioned museums hope!

And on a final note, I'm always a fan of weird coincidences. The addition of this car makes it the third car at Orange Empire numbered 1003. The other two, an LARy Birney and a San Diego double-truck streetcar, are in slightly worse condition.

Orange Empire updates

I had a chance to visit Orange Empire for the first time in some 13 years last week and it was quite an interesting visit. It was during the week, so nothing was running, but the volunteers there were kind enough to show me around and take me through all of the barns. The "new" barn, the six-track behemoth towards the east side of the property, was especially impressive. And as one might expect, the visit resulted in a number of changes to the PNAERC listings for equipment owned by the museum.

First there is Bamberger 127, shown below, the ex-Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville "Bullet car" which was formerly listed as under restoration. The restoration effort seems to be paused for the moment so it's been changed to "displayed inoperable."

Nearby in the same barn was San Diego Electric Railway 508, an early PCC that was sitting forlornly outdoors the last time I saw it around 2005 but has now been beautifully repainted inside and out and looks like it's nearly ready for service. Its status has been changed to "undergoing restoration" though it may already be a regular service car, I'm not completely certain. Off to the right is Pacific Electric 1624 which has been changed from "stored" to "displayed."

And then there was the line of Pacific Electric "Hollywood cars" shown below. Orange Empire owns no fewer than five of these cars: car 717 is one of their regular service cars while car 655 was recently acquired in semi-restored condition and is in line for restoration work. That leaves the three cars below, which a decade ago were stored outside (as attested by their faded appearance) on display but are now stored safely inside the new barn. However they're not really on public exhibit - at least I don't think they are, as the volunteer docent showing me around didn't seem familiar with this part of the barn - so their condition has been changed from "display" to "stored." From left to right that's car 637, car 716, and car 5123.

In that same part of the new barn was Pacific Electric 1000, the business car "Commodore." It too has been changed from "displayed" to "stored."

Below is San Diego Electric Railway 1003, ex-Utah Light & Traction 656, whose condition belies its historical significance as the only preserved city car from Salt Lake City. Similarly to the "Hollywood" cars this car used to be stored in a fairly prominent display position on the OERM property. It has also been changed from "displayed" to "stored" but it has made its way to the far back of the property on the other side of the fence. I assume it's still owned by the museum though.

And finally there's Los Angeles Transit Lines 1435, which I was surprised to see at Orange Empire at all since the last I knew it was privately owned and stored in Los Angeles. But I shouldn't have been surprised, as this blog post from the ATRRM blog points out that the car arrived in Perris in early 2016. Unfortunately it has arrived to be scrapped; Orange Empire owns two other cars from this exact series in better condition, 1423 and 1450, and car 1435 is missing a great number of parts that were stripped by Muni for eventual use on Johnstown 351. The ATRRM post also corrects an error formerly included in the car's PNAERC listing; I had thought the ill-fated trip north from Orange Empire, and subsequent transfer to Muni, was in 1993 but this suggests it was actually 1975. That has been corrected and the car's ownership has been changed from Electric Railway Historical Association to OERM.

And then there were a few cars that had changed since my last visit or just caught my eye, even if no PNAERC changes were made. Below is Los Angeles Transit Lines 2601, the very unusual prototype Peter Witt. This is a rare example of a traditional pre-PCC car. Not many streetcars were built between the onset of the Depression and the advent of the PCC so this car is a rarity. It is undergoing a thorough and long-term restoration.

Another long-term restoration is Pacific Electric 498, the museum's "Blimp" combine. This ex-Interurban Electric Railway car has just recently been painted and looks gorgeous. As with SDER 508, its restoration may be just about done but I'm not entirely sure.

There isn't really anything new about PE 1001, I'm just a fan of big wooden interurban cars. What a classic! To the far right is PE 655, mentioned earlier.

Here's something of a mystery: Orange Empire owns three "Huntington standard" bodies of Los Angeles Railways cars, cars 744, 807, and 836. Anyone know which one this photo shows? UPDATE: John Smatlak confirms that this is indeed car 744.

This isn't Orange Empire per se, but rather a next door neighbor. Visible from the back of the property are two Los Angeles Railway "sow-belly" center-entrance car bodies, cars 34 and 44, listed under Electric Railway Historical Association ownership and located on private property adjacent to the museum. (OERM has a car of this class, LARy 936, in much better shape.) Also located on the property are the body of San Diego 201 and a Toronto PCC.

You can even see them on Google aerial photos. Who knows...

First blog post

As I write this post, the new and improved PNAERC site is in beta test mode. The site's webmaster, Jeff Hakner, has completely redesigned the backend of the site and from now on we will be able to make changes to any listing at any time. I am going through and correcting any data that got mangled during the data transfer, after which I will be going back through the blog again to update and correct photo and video links.

I'm also making changes and updates, which going forward will be the raison d'etre for this blog. Today I added two recently-preserved cars to the list, both Duewag U2 LRV's from San Diego. Car 1017 was acquired earlier this year by the Western Railway Museum while car 1008 was acquired by Orange Empire. Both have been added to the PNAERC list, joining cars 1018 and 1019 which were already there.

Help needed: I am still looking for mechanical information on these San Diego U2 cars to fill in the gaps, so any assistance with this is appreciated!