Amsterdam, New York car dismantled

Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville streetcar 29, shown above in an Owen Dalton photo from a couple of years ago and featured a couple of years ago on this blog, is no more. Marc Glucksman of River Rail Photo alerted me to the fact that it had been scrapped, and Ann from the Walter Elwood Museum in Amsterdam, New York - the streetcar's former location - kindly filled in the details via email. It seems that the car had been privately owned and moved to a spot behind the museum back in 2015. The owner intended to restore the car for display, but this work never commenced and the car's condition steadily deteriorated. The museum was forced to demand the car's removal last year, and the owner - evidently unable to find another site for it - dismantled the car in November. The car was somewhat historic, as the only FJ&G streetcar in existence and a rare Wason pre-Birney single-trucker, but was obviously in poor shape. It has been removed from the PNAERC list.

1917 Wason added to list

It's not every day that I get to add a newly-discovered streetcar to the PNAERC list, but it happens now and then. Today the lucky car is Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville 29, a single-trucker built by Wason in 1917 and pictured above in a photo posted to Facebook by Owen Dalton. The car is a body (of course) and is currently sitting along Route 67 in Amsterdam, New York, a few miles west of Schenectady, on the grounds of the Walter Elwood Museum. This is the local history museum and judging from good ol' Google Street View the streetcar appeared sometime between September 205 and August 2016 so that's my best guess as to when the museum acquired it. It's hard to tell exactly what condition the car is in, but the side towards the street at least looks largely intact, so that's something.

Fortunately I was able to find a couple of articles online that referenced the car. This article identifies the car as FJ&G 29 and provides a pretty decent in-service photo of it. And this article provides a bit more information, including its builder and vintage as well as a vague accounting of one or two other organizations that apparently used to own it. It's a handsomely proportioned pre-Birney single-truck steel car apparently built for two-man use.

So if anyone has a good book on the FJ&G and can provide more information on the car, let me know. I'm 90% sure from that in-service photo that it had a Taylor truck, but I don't have any other information on it. The FJ&G apparently abandoned streetcar service in Amsterdam in 1936, so that's my best guess for when this car would have been retired, but I just don't know. Car 29 is one of four FJ&G cars on the PNAERC roster and the only one that 1) is preserved in FJ&G territory, and 2) isn't a Bullet car!