Cars on the move

There are two cars on the PNAERC list that have recently moved. The first is Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453, pictured above in a photo taken earlier today. As noted on our sister blog, this 1946 interurban car was recently sold to the Illinois Railway Museum by the Electric City Trolley Museum. ECTM acquired it back in 2009 from Trolleyville as part of the consortium effort to distribute the collection of that organization when it went defunct, but after the car was moved to Scranton in early 2010 it was simply held in storage. For various reasons it was preserved but was not the focus of restoration work, and recently ECTM began eyeing the car's indoor storage spot as potential home for another car owned by that organization but stored off-site. With its addition to the IRM collection, that museum now owns ten CA&E cars evenly split between wood and steel cars, more than half of all the CA&E cars in preservation. And as a matter of trivia, car 453 is the first car sold as part of the 2009 consortium effort to have changed owners in the time since.

The other car that has recently moved is Lackawanna MU club car 2454, owned by the Whippany Railway Museum in New Jersey. While its ownership hasn't changed, the car has for several years been located in Boonton where it has been undergoing a monumental restoration effort courtesy of contractor Star Trak. That restoration job - I would it's say by far the most extensive ever done to a Lackawanna MU car - concluded earlier this year and photos posted on Facebook show that the car has now been sent on to the WRM site. Unfortunately it still has some boarded-up windows owing to a nasty vandalism incident in Boonton back in April but hopefully that damage is fixed soon. The car looks to be a real showpiece.

Addition and transfers

First off for today, San Diego LRV 1001 - the class car of that city's first order for modern LRVs for its first light rail line in the early 1980s - has been added to the list. The car has been designated for preservation by the San Diego system and has been assigned to the San Diego Vintage Trolley historic fleet there. This makes car 1001 the fifth car of its type to be preserved; there are two more in Rio Vista, one at Orange Empire and one out east at Rockhill Trolley Museum.

I also updated a couple of the Lackawanna MU cars that were already on the roster. A 2014 photo of car 3607, one of the 1930 motor cars, came to my attention showing that the car has been sold by the Everett Railroad in Pennsylvania to the Durbin & Greenbriar Valley (though lettered for West Virginia Central, a subsidiary of the D&GV) in West Virginia. It was on the Everett in 2005 but I'm not sure exactly when it went to West Virginia; anyone have an exact date? This is one of the ex-Knox & Kane cars, most of which were sold to Heber Valley in Utah where they are currently in use.

And finally, club car 2454's ownership was changed to the Whippany Railway Museum. This had already been listed in the car's notes, as it was formally donated to WRM by former owner United Railroad Historical Society in 2014, but I hadn't changed the owner in the database since the car hadn't left Boonton. However the car is currently undergoing restoration at Star Trak in Boonton on behalf of Whippany so I figured I may as well correct and update the car's owner. This ought to be a very impressive restoration when it's done; these Lackawanna club cars were very distinct pieces.