More Miscellany - Relocation, Removal, Disappearances

Today's entry is something of a catch-all of recent updates. First, thanks to Bill Wall for sending the above photo showing Public Service Coordinated Transport 5173. This is what remains of a four-wheel snow sweeper from the Newark subway; it burned in a fire in the subway in 1972 but its frame has been owned by the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society since 1980. It's been stored in Phillipsburg for years, but was just relocated to join the rest of the NJERHS collection in Piscataway. I'm looking for information on this thing, especially who built it and when - anyone have a good PSCT roster handy?

Next up, we have a removal: Scarborough Rapid Transit 3027, a linear-induction-motor car shown above, has been dismantled by the Halton County Radial Railway. HCRR acquired two of these cars, 3027 and sister car 3026, with the idea of dismantling one, so this is not unexpected. The Halton County roster currently stands at 54 cars on PNAERC, while the overall list has 2,088 cars.

Finally, I tell you a mystery: two Texas Electric freight trailers have disappeared from the grounds of the Texas State Railroad in Rusk, Texas. The two are TE 605, built by St. Louis in 1907 as Texas Traction coach 6, rebuilt as a freight motor in 1914, and rebuilt as freight trailer 605 in 1918; and TE 613 (shown above), built in 1907 as Texas Traction coach 7, rebuilt c1914 as an RPO-coach, and then rebuilt in 1925 as a freight trailer. For years, both cars sat on the ground at the east/southeast end of the TSRR yard in Rusk. But at some point, they disappeared, both from Street View and (as near as I can tell) from aerial photos. Does anyone know for sure what happened to them? I believe they were just used for storage, so my best guess is that they were dismantled, but I'd love to know for sure. I've changed the status of each car to "unknown" pending word one way or another. (The third body owned by TSRR, ex-C&LE box motor 646, is still visible on Google Street View as recently as a year and a half ago.)

Two freight trailers added to PNAERC roster

So here's another piece of good news: I've managed to identify a pair of cars that have long been on my list of "mystery cars." They're both interurban freight trailers from the Texas Electric that are on the grounds of the Texas State Railroad in Rusk. With help from TE expert John Myers they've been identified as cars 605 and 613 and added to the PNAERC list.

Both have intriguing histories. They both started life as handsome railroad-roof Texas Traction interurban coaches built by St. Louis Car Company in 1907; car 605 was originally TT 6 and 613 was originally TT 7 (a photo of identical car 8 is here). After a few years car 6 was rebuilt by TT into a freight motor and renumbered 554; around the same time car 7 was rebuilt from a straight coach into a coach-RPO car and renumbered 356. TT was incorporated into Texas Electric in 1916 and both 356 and 554 initially kept their numbers. Car 554 was rebuilt in 1918 into its current form as an unpowered interurban freight trailer and renumbered to 605; seven years later, in 1925, car 356 was also rebuilt as a freight trailer. Both would have been retired when TE quit in 1949 and both were retrieved and moved to Rusk in 1996, at the same time freight motor 501 and freight trailer 608 were moved to Van Alstyne and put on display there. Click here for a photo of 605 and click here for a photo of 613.

So the Texas State Railroad's collection of grounded interurban freight equipment has tripled, with the two native freight trailers joining the ex-C&LE freight motor that arrived in Rusk around the late 1990s as well. It's a bit of an odd collection for a steam tourist line but while the cars are all used for storage, they're also being taken care of and do qualify as "preserved" by my standards. Hopefully they are kept up going forward. This also means that there are 10 known pieces of preserved Texas Electric equipment in all: two locomotives (the only complete examples), three passenger cars, two freight motors, and three freight trailers.