The last ITM electrics

It appears that the last electric cars owned by the Indiana Transportation Museum, formerly IMOTAC, have been scrapped. Lackawanna MU cars 4336, 4337, and 4361, all of which were relocated from a siding in Cicero, Indiana to an empty lot in Logansport in November 2019, have been cut up per a post on RyPN (thanks to Wesley Paulson for tracking this down). The above photo, from several days ago, shows the early stages of the scrapping process, with what appears to be a backhoe demolishing an Army troop sleeper or something.

Of course these three cars are no real loss, and given their atrocious condition it's no surprise that they're gone. It's more of a surprise that they were moved to Logansport at all and not scrapped in place in Cicero. But the recent history of ITM is a story of poor decisions and misplaced resources. To my knowledge, there are still railroad cars here and there owned by ITM, so the organization still casts a shadow, thin though it might be. But there's nothing owned by the group that remains on the PNAERC list.

Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200 update

Many thanks to Thomas Mafrici, who has forwarded along photos of recent restoration work on his interurban car. You'll recall that back in 2014, as noted here, he purchased the body of Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200. Car 200 is a heavy wooden interurban car built in 1906 by Cincinnati and is, I believe, the last wooden car surviving from any of the Syracuse area interurban lines. Thomas and cabinetmaker Dan Zollo have since been working on rebuilding the car and have sent along update photos. Most recent work has concentrated on rebuilding the car's roof. The scope of the project and the evident craftsmanship are both impressive. On the PNAERC roster, car 200's condition has been updated from "stored inoperable" to "undergoing restoration."

Jersey Shore car identified

 

The Jersey Shore Historical Society in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania (no, not New Jersey) has posted some information on its Facebook page (no log-in required) about Jersey Shore Street Railway 14. This is the single-truck streetcar body that has been at the Peter Herdic Transportation Museum and was only added to the PNAERC list about three months ago (see here).

The post from JSHS is quite interesting. The gist is that they are acquiring the car from the Peter Herdic museum and plan on restoring it over the next few years. So that's good news, and once the car is physically moved I'll change over its ownership on the PNAERC list. But they also include some interesting information on the car's history. Most notably, I now know its number: JSR 14. Per a previous email from Matt Nawn, I knew that the car was part of the JSSR 14-16 series but didn't know which car it was. Matt reported that JSSR 14 would have earlier been Philadelphia Rapid Transit 86 (sold to JSSR at an unknown date along with PRT 939 and 942) and would have then been numbered JSSR 101 until it was rebuilt - again at an unknown date - as a one-man car and renumbered 14. So there are still plenty of unknowns about the car's history, and the automatically-generated list of its past owners on the PNAERC roster is out of order because there are so many missing dates, but this helps fill in some pretty big gaps.

Finally, the JSHS post has some nice photos of the car before it was tarped, including the one at the top of this post. For a body, it looks like it's in decent condition, or at least it was when the photos were taken.

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!

LRV's removed from list

A little over a year ago, in January 2020 back "before this all started" as they say, I put up this post about the MBTA listing its three Boeing-Vertol LRV's for sale. Well, it occurred to me that I had never followed up to see what happened with those cars.

I had guessed that they were most likely scrapped, and a check of the Boston Transit Museum MBTA roster page reveals that to be true. It says that all three cars were cut up a year ago, back in March 2020, but given the unusual amount of news happening that month I guess this didn't quite make the headlines. 

There are photos of all three cars at the January 2020 post linked above, but suffice to say that all three - MBTA 3417, 3448, and 3453 (all original numbers) - were built by Boeing-Vertol in 1976 for the T. Cars 3417 and 3453 were rebuilt in the mid-1990s as a re-railing car and a general work car, respectively, while 3448 became a "track geometry car" in 2005 after it had been painted in Boston Elevated Railway colors. All had been out of service for years by 2020, though, and from the photos in the MBTA sale listing they were obviously in very rough shape.

So these three have now been removed from the list. That leaves only one preserved Boeing-Vertol LRV from Boston, car 3424 preserved inoperable at Seashore, plus three San Francisco examples, two in museums (both, against all odds, currently operational) and one in private ownership in dubious condition.

Newark PCC plinthed

Thanks to John Igoe of the North Jersey Electric Railway Historical Society for sending along the above photo of Public Service Coordinated Transport 28, credited to Trolley Lines #30, Tony Hall. This photo shows the car in its new home, plinthed next to the main gate of the Kinki-Sharyo plant in Piscataway, New Jersey. Previously I had reported that the car had been repainted by Kinki-Sharyo and it appears that this is why: so that it can be displayed out in front of the plant. Of course I'm a bit behind the times on this, and John reports that car 28 has been out by the plant entrance since the end of 2019 (it's even visible on Google aerial photos), but better late than never. And thanks also to Bill Wall, who confirms that car 28 is definitely owned by New Jersey Transit and is simply on display in Piscataway.

John also sent along some other updates on the NJERHS collection. Most I was aware of from the update I received late last year, but it was confirmed that most of the organization's collection was shrink-wrapped and placed in storage outside the southwest corner of the Kinki-Sharyo plant. Car 2651 is still indoors, where I believe it was being worked on until the pandemic struck and will presumably be worked on again once things sufficiently reopen, while Newark PCC 13 is in storage at the URHS yard in Boonton and itself was recently shrink-wrapped.

Controller terminology change

It's not very often that we change the terminology used on the PNAERC list. I do what I can to keep things consistent and I'm more successful with this in some areas than in others. Recently Jeff Hakner noticed that there were some inconsistencies with my control terminology. Fortunately, he recommended an eminently sensible solution.

Previously, for most MU control, I was using hyphens between the control system type and the master controller. This tends to be common usage, at least in railfan publications, and gives you equipment designations like "GE M-C6A" or "WH HL-15B1." However Jeff pointed out that in some cases, notably PC control, I was putting the master controller in parentheses, e.g. "GE PC-10 (CJ129)." I think I did this because hyphenating PC-control seemed standard but I also didn't want strings of hyphens. But it's inconsistent. It's also inconsistent with the brake terminology we've long used, where the brake schedule is followed by the motorman's valve in parentheses, e.g. "AMM (M15B)."

The solution Jeff recommended - and, with a bit of input from me, has implemented - was to put master controllers in parentheses. So "GE M-C6A" is now "GE M (C6A)" and "WH HL-15B1" is now "WH HL (15B1)." This conveys the same information but, I think, in a slightly clearer and certainly more consistent fashion. Enjoy.