What once was lost now is found

There's news on two cars formerly considered "lost," though in somewhat different circumstances. First off, a big thanks to Chris Baldwin for forwarding along photos taken by Christopher Skidmore of NJ Transit PCC 24. This car (a standard ex-Minneapolis car built in 1947) has been considered something of a mystery since late 2018, when it was spotted on a truck trailer westbound in Pennsylvania. Well it has now turned up about as far west as a truck will go.

It's stored at Carlos Guzman Inc, a painting contractor in Signal Hill, CA near Long Beach. This company has worked with San Diego Vintage Trolley, Muni, and Orange Empire. So I'm not certain whether the car is owned by one of those organizations (though I don't think OERM is involved) or whether the contractor acquired the car "on spec" for some reason. Update: Chris has confirmed that Carlos Guzman Inc does not own the car; nor does OERM or San Diego Vintage Trolley, with which the contractor has worked in the past. It sounds like it's being held for use with some sort of public art display, so we will see what transpires with that.

And while we're in the southwest, a second car thought lost has been found. Phoenix Street Railway 509, which was assumed to have been scrapped back in 1948 when PSR was abandoned, turned up when it was suddenly offered as a donation to the Arizona Street Railway Museum (aka Phoenix Trolley Museum). The announcement is here (no log-in required) - thanks go to Wesley Paulson and Olin Anderson for alerting me to this. ASRM appears to have accepted the donation of the car but has not yet moved the car, so it's still somewhat in limbo, but I have added it to the PNAERC list.

Car 509 is an American Car Company-built double-truck lightweight built in 1928. It's not a Birney, but rather a fairly unusual example of a late-1920s American design that was used by a handful of cities. It's one number up from car 508 (originally 116), which is also preserved by ASRM and was largely restored in the 1980s/1990s. In fact a third car from this series, 504 (originally 108), is owned by ASRM too. It really is remarkable that four cars of two different types were saved from such a small system, but I suppose it's a testament to the climate.

Cars on the move

 

It appears that the East Troy Electric Railroad has purchased CTA 4439, shown above in a somewhat recent photo from the First & Fastest Facebook page, from its current owner, the Toledo Lake Erie & Western. This is one of the more elusive of the preserved 4000s and has been off public display for a couple of decades at least. I vaguely recall seeing it back about 20 years ago and, as the above photo suggests, it appears to be in good condition. After it left CTA in 1975, I believe it was briefly stored in Michigan City before going to the state of Michigan where it was stored by the Oakland County Parks & Recreation Commission. I have no idea why OCP&RC acquired this car nor what their plans were for it. I think (but am not sure) that they're the ones responsible for fixing it up and putting it in this green paint scheme. It later made its way to Charley Sheets' collection in Toledo, thence to Grand Rapids, OH, and into possession of the TLE&W as outlined here. I haven't changed the car's listing over to East Troy yet, as it hasn't yet physically made its way to Wisconsin, but that should just be a matter of time.

And in unrelated news, Gord McOuat has sent me the numbers of the latest two Toronto CLRV's to be acquired by Halton County. Car 4040 and car 4053 were acquired by Halton as parts sources, however the museum hasn't yet decided which two of their (now) six CLRV's will be scrapped for parts and which four will be retained. So it's quite likely that one or both of these cars may end up being retained for preservation. In any event, both cars have now been added to the PNAERC list, bringing the total number of preserved CLRV's up to 14.

Yet more CLRV's

It's time yet again to add more CLRV's to the PNAERC list. We are now up to a total of 12 CLRV's and two articulated ALRV's on the list and that's not the end of it. There are at least two more of the former type that have been acquired by Halton County (they plan on scrapping two of their six for parts but it will take time to decide which two) and there are rumors that two or three additional cars were sold in a recent auction to buyers unknown. So let's get to it.

The first contender is car 4001, one of the original 1977 prototype cars built by SIG in Switzerland. This article from December was brought to my attention pointing out that the car is being preserved by TTC itself as part of the system's historic fleet. Also being preserved by TTC is car 4089, a standard production car dating to 1979 (or maybe 1980 - delivery took place over a couple of years) and built in Canada by Hawker-Siddeley. Both cars have now been added to the PNAERC list.

Then there's a pair of cars that have been acquired by the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, car 4024 and car 4170. What does the CLRV have to do with American mining? Glad you asked! Not a thing, as far as I can tell. However AIMCM seems to be very closely intertwined with Buckeye Lake Trolley, so it seems likely that these cars are intended to fit in more with the BLT collection than with the collection of mining equipment currently shown on the AIMCM website. Right now both cars are being stored at Halton County pending movement to the states, and I've made a notation that they're owned by BLT / AIMCM.

Speaking of Halton, in addition to the two AIMCM cars they're currently hosting, and in addition to the two cars they're currently hosting that are owned by Seashore, and in addition to the two mystery cars mentioned above potentially acquired as parts sources, they've also gotten a fourth CLRV for their historic collection. It's the car pictured (while still in service last year) at the top of this post: car 4178, which in September 2019 was hand-painted in a very colorful livery by local Toronto artists. TTC asked Halton if they would be interested in preserving this admittedly unique piece and they gamely agreed, so the car is now in Rockwood and also on the PNAERC list. Thanks to Gord McOuat for passing along this update.

And finally - for the CLRV category at least - comes this article about a young man who has purchased car 4187 and is moving it to his family's farm in rural Priceville, north/northwest of Toronto. Though I usually don't list cars like this until they've physically been moved, it sounded like this was a fait accompli and with private collections like this it's not terribly likely that updates will be communicated to the preservation community at large. EDIT: I was wrong - the update is here.

But wait, there's an encore. It appears that a second ALRV - the two-car articulated version of the CLRV - has indeed been preserved by TTC, joining CLRV's 4001 and 4089 in the system's historic collection. I believe that it is car 4207, built in 1988 and withdrawn from service in mid-2019. What with the pandemic scrambling things, neither the ALRV nor the TTC's preserved CLRV's seem to have made any public appearances, but at some point they will presumably emerge to join the system's Peter Witt and its two PCC cars in excursion service.

A move and an addition

The big news for today is that the National Capital Trolley Museum has acquired DC Transit 1470 from the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke. The news was report in a Facebook post (no log-in required). Car 1470 is a standard postwar Washington DC PCC car, built in 1945 by St. Louis Car Company, and bears some of the unique features of DC postwar cars such as air-electric brakes, taller-than-normal side windows, and a prewar style windshield. It also has an unusual automatic pole-lowering device. It joins the only other DC postwar car preserved domestically, car 1540, in the NCTM collection but it is in much better condition. Despite some 45 years of outdoor display in Roanoke, car 1470 was maintained in generally good condition from all appearances and may be a good candidate for restoration to operational condition. It was always a bit of an oddball display in Roanoke and it's great to see it back home at National Capital.

This is just the latest Washington DC car to be returned to home territory from initial preservation elsewhere. It follows prewar PCC car 1430, acquired from Rockhill in 1997; center-entrance car 650, brought home from Branford in 2002; and sweeper 09, repatriated from Rockhill in 2012. Other than PCC cars sold abroad or heavily rebuilt for service elsewhere, nearly every preserved car from Washington is now preserved in or near DC. EDIT: Many thanks to Wesley Paulson of NCTM for the photos of car 1470 now included in this post.

And on an unrelated topic, I've also added a new car to the list. It's not a newly-preserved car but it has just recently come across my radar as a significant piece of traction history. The car in question is Chicago Transit Authority S314, a work car preserved at the Fox River Trolley Museum. It has recently been cosmetically restored and is apparently in use. I'd seen it before but had been under the mistaken impression that it was essentially a piece of non-traction railroad work equipment. However it turns out that, while not self-propelled, it is fully 600v-powered (including a prominently mounted D3F pump) and has quite the illustrious traction heritage. It was built by Chicago City Railway as a cab-on-flat work car, later sold to the Calumet & South Chicago, and served the Chicago Surface Lines for decades.

Interurban sleeping car for sale

A post on Facebook here (no log-in required) reports that Illinois Terminal 535 is available for sale. The photo above is from that post. Car 535 is "sort-of" one of the last three interurban sleeping cars in existence. It was built by St Louis Car Company in 1911 as coach trailer 527 (it was part of the same series as, and was originally identical to, car 518 preserved at IRM). In 1930 the car was heavily rebuilt by the IT into a 9-bedroom sleeping car, renumbered 501, and given the name "Illinois." I'm not sure how much use it saw in sleeping car service given the onset of the Depression but in 1942 it was rebuilt again. This time its bedrooms were stripped out and it was turned back into a coach trailer numbered 535. It was sold into private ownership by the IT in 1966, went to the Monticello museum in 1972, and was then sold off by that museum in 1988. No other museum was interested so the body was sold to an individual who owned the IT depot in Harristown, Illinois. The car's body has been sitting next to the Harristown depot, more-or-less on the old interurban right-of-way, ever since. Its current owner is an individual who purchased the depot property a few years back, I believe.

So in a way - if considered on the merits of its 12-year bedroom car career - car 535 is quite historic. Only two other interurban sleeping cars still exist and both (IT 504 at IRM and IPS 167 in Squamish, BC) feature sections, not bedrooms. With some mental gymnastics you could also consider this the most modern interurban sleeper ever put into service, as I'm pretty sure nobody was building interurban sleeping cars after 1930. But while it's an historic car, it's also a pretty poor candidate for preservation. Unlike the other two extant sleepers, it's far from complete even as a coach, much less a sleeping car. It's a body and a pretty badly stripped one at that. Worse, its condition is wretched - from photos it looks like the body is wracked (racked?), the roof is in very poor shape, and the interior is a mess. It looks like it would be a project just to move the car at all without it collapsing. So unfortunately it seems like a bit of a stretch that it will find a new home and long-term preservation. But I suppose time will tell.

PCC cars for sale

The Seashore Trolley Museum has announced on their website that they are putting a total of nine PCC cars up for sale (along with some buses). The cars are divided into two categories: single-ended cars built for Boston, of which there are three, and double-ended cars built for Dallas and later sold to Boston, of which there are six.

The single-ended cars are MBTA 3037, MBTA 3069, and MBTA 3174. All three were already listed on the PNAERC roster as "not accessioned" thus it is no shock that they're now being formally offered for sale. Cars 3037 and 3069 (the latter shown above in a photo from hopetunnel.org) were both built by Pullman-Standard in 1944 and are duplicates of car 3127, which is part of Seashore's historic collection. Car 3037 has been tarped in recent years while car 3069 has been displayed atop the "highway monster," Seashore's streetcar-hauling tractor-trailer rig, as an exhibit piece. Car 3174 was built by Pullman-Standard in 1945 and is duplicated by car 3221 in the Seashore collection It too has been tarped in recent years if I'm not mistaken. Cars 3069 and 3174 have been at Seashore for 35 years now while 3037 arrived later and has been in Kennebunkport since 1994.

And then there are six Dallas double-ended PCC cars, all of them built by Pullman-Standard in 1945. Four of them - cars 3328, 3331, 3338, and 3344 - were already listed on the roster as being for sale. These are cars that were acquired by Seashore in 1985 (except for 3338, which was acquired in 1994 from a short-lived preservation group) for the purpose of resale. They've been shopped around to various transit operators and heritage lines on and off for a few decades now but with no takers yet.

The other two cars are 3327 and 3343, both of which were converted into work cars and arrived at Seashore in 1999. These two cars have not been listed as deaccessioned, so the decision to sell them is new information. Both had large equipment doors cut into the middle of the car body, not to mention interior modification, so they'd need backdating work to turn them back into passenger cars.

As with the single-ended cars, Seashore has examples of Dallas double-enders that they are keeping in their historic collection, both in passenger (Dallas 608 - later MBTA 3342 - in original colors and car 3340 in Boston livery) and in work car (line car 3332) configuration. Thus, this proposed thinning of the collection won't remove anything particularly unique from the Seashore fleet.

Well that's embarrassing

Back in March, I got an email from Joe Sharretts that pointed out a mistake on the PNAERC roster. It took me a little while to get to the bottom of it (many thanks to Joel Salomon and Charles High for providing more information) but over the weekend they confirmed that my listings for Red Arrow cars at the Middletown & Hummelstown have been incorrect for years. And it's not a minor thing either: the M&H has two "80-series" Red Arrow cars, but my roster has long listed three of them there. One of these three cars on the list hasn't actually existed since it was scrapped in 1982.

So what in the world happened? Until now the three 80-series cars on my list were car 77, car 83, and car 86. There's no question around car 77; it was apparently sold to the M&H in 1982 and in recent years has had one end on jack stands with a truck pulled out (photo here). The issue comes with cars 83 and 86. Apparently, when the M&H decided to buy Red Arrow cars, they purchased 77 and 86. However at the last minute someone - whether at the M&H or at SEPTA - decided that car 86 had some damage and that car 83, which I guess hadn't been sold, would be a better car to get. So the numbers were swapped. Car 83 was hastily painted up as car 86, while car 86 briefly acquired the number 83 before it was scrapped. At least, from what I'm told that's what's going on... hopefully I'm not getting this backwards!

So car 83 is the second 80-series car at the M&H; it's pictured at the top of this post in a Connor Frasier photo from here and if you look closely you can see that its fleet number appears to have been altered at some point. In retrospect that's part of what caused the confusion: depending on which side or end of the car you were looking at, its number either looked more like "83" or more like "86" so I thought that I was just seeing photos of different cars. Oops. Well, at least the mistake is corrected now. We regret the error.