Brill Semi-Convertible Acquired by PTM

The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum is on a collecting spree. After acquiring the "Terrible Trolley" PCC car earlier this summer, on Friday they took delivery of a far more inherently historic car: Shamokin & Mt. Carmel Transit 33. S&MC 33 was built by Brill in 1905 and it's a surprisingly rare example of a Brill "rubber stamp" semi-convertible. Cars of this design ran on a huge number of streetcar lines, especially small-town lines, in the early years of the century. But most were long gone by the time the preservation movement rose up, so the truly "off-the-shelf" Brill semi-convertible is nearly extinct. In fact, this is arguably the last example of the classic type.

This car was built for the S&MC and ran on that system until it was retired in 1938 (in-service photo here). It was then acquired by the Knoebel's Amusement Park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, where for many decades it sat underneath a large shed, largely out of sight for much of that time. The family elected to dispose of the car this year and, fortunately, elected to convey it to PTM as indicated by the museum's post here.

Postcard from Yakima

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson, who visited the Yakima Electric Railway Museum this past week and sent along some photos of the collection there. I haven't been to Yakima, but from what I've seen, it looks like a fascinating time capsule - a small-town street railway car barn preserved in amber, to some degree, complete with a set of working line shaft-operated machines in one corner of the barn. The system outside I'm also not terribly familiar with; they operate an Oporto single-trucker, but I'm not sure how far they go. The trackage extends a ways out of town but some of the wire was stolen some years back, if memory serves. Overall, it's a unique setup.

Here's an overview inside the barn. On the left is Yakima Valley Traction 298, the line's steeplecab, built new for Yakima by GE in 1922. Behind it is line car A, which was built as a locomotive by Niles, of all companies, in 1909. On the right is the Oporto single-trucker. All three of these pieces are operational, I believe, though the locomotive and line car appear to be only rarely used.

The only piece of native passenger equipment in operational condition is this attractive Master Unit, YVT 21, which was built by Brill in 1930. It went to Portland Traction in 1948 after YVT quit passenger service and was then privately owned until it was repatriated in 1989.

There's also identical car 22, emblazoned with the name of its former (and now-deceased) owner. This car is not operational but appears to be in reasonably good condition.

And finally, as far as traction equipment is concerned, there is YVT 20, which was part of the same 1930 order but fared markedly worse than its two sisters. It, too, went to Portland Traction and then spent time in the rain forest in Snoqualmie in private ownership. However at some point its condition deteriorated markedly and it had a tree fall on it - which came first is a chicken/egg question that I'm not sure about. It was finally pulled out of the forest in 2018 and, amazingly, was not scrapped but instead was sent to Yakima. I have no idea what the long-term plans for this car might be.

Again, many thanks to Wesley for sending these great photos!

Wrong Fair

Back in 2019, I posted here that Los Angeles Transit Lines 1435 - or, at least, its body - had been sold by the Southern California Railway Museum to the Riverside County Fairgrounds in Indio. Except, it turns out that I had the wrong fairgrounds - and the wrong Riverside County Fairgrounds, no less. The new Riverside County Fairgrounds is in Indio, but the old Riverside County Fairgrounds was in Perris, just a couple of miles from SCRM. After the fair moved to Indio, I guess, it changed its name to the Southern California Fairgrounds. And sure, enough, there's the car on Google Maps in an image captured in 2022. Car 1435's history has been corrected.

Photo Call

I need your help! You may be aware that the photos on the PNAERC roster are, in many cases, very out-of-date. We haven't been able to update photos or video on an as-needed basis the way we've been able to update the written data. While this won't change per se, we are going to try and do a batch update and upload an entire new set of images - up to two images per car for some 2,100 cars - this summer or fall. That should allow us to add images of cars added to the roster since the last photo upload, back in 2014, and update images for cars that have been restored during the last decade.

And this is where you come in! There are a lot of cars for which I'm missing photos, or at least missing photos that are recent, good, or both. I'm not looking for photos of Pacific Electric 717 or ConnCo 1160 - there are a ton of photos out there of the "regular runners." What I need are recent-ish pictures of the equipment that usually lives in a storage barn or under a tarp - something like Los Angeles Railway 9007 or Boston Elevated Railway 3271.

If you can submit a photo, email it to me through www.bera.org/pnaerc.html. Web resolution, 1024 or 800 pixels wide, is great. Better yet, if you have - or know of - a photo that's posted online, just send me the link. And thank you!

Capital Traction Single-Trucker Runs

Thanks to Wesley Paulson for sending along the above photo of Capital Traction 522 running at the National Capital Trolley Museum for the first time following the restoration of its body and exterior, as well as replacement of its work car-era Brill 21E truck with an authentic Lord Baltimore truck (which I didn't realize is a replica constructed in recent years by Lyons Industries - an impressive feat!). There's also video of the car running here. The operational restoration was made possible in part by volunteers from the Baltimore Streetcar Museum who helped with rewiring and brake work. Car 522 is quite historic, of course; it's one of the oldest existing cars from the Washington system and it's the oldest currently in operation. That Lord Baltimore truck is a rarity, too - there are only five cars in existence with this type, including three cars at BSM and Capital Traction 303 (of the same type as car 522) in the Smithsonian. Congratulations to NCTM on this major step forward!

In less happy news, thanks to Andy Nold for passing along the news that the body of El Paso Electric Railway 111 has been scrapped. This car, which was in extremely rough condition, was the last survivor from El Paso Electric Railway (the predecessor of El Paso City Lines) and the only non-PCC streetcar from El Paso known to still exist. A "Stone & Webster" type turtleback-roof car, it was built in 1912 for El Paso as a trailer but later transferred to Northern Texas Traction and motorized [corrected]. It had been stored in Azle, Texas, under the auspices of the now-defunct Northern Texas Historic Transportation group.

EDIT: The two below photos of car 111 were taken by Andy Nold. He writes, "...the car was in great shape. Only known 12-window Stone and Webster turtleback in existence. The photos are after the new owner of the land beat it up with a backhoe."

North Dakota streetcar for sale

There's only one preserved electric car in the state of North Dakota, and it's for sale. Grand Forks Street Railway 102, shown above in a 2016 photo from the Heritage Rail Alliance website, is a 1911 single-truck deck-roof car built by American. At one time, cars of this exact design were common in dozens of smaller Midwestern cities, but examples of the type are quite rare today. This car was fixed up, with body restoration seemingly done in a relatively authentic manner, and given a gas engine so that it could be used to carry people through Fort Lincoln Park near Bismarck. According to this article from the Bismarck Tribune, though, the operation is now for sale. Holdings include a few miles of track, car 102, and a replica open car that appears to have seen more regular use in recent years. It sounds like the owners are trying to sell the entire operation as a package deal, and want everything to remain intact and in situ. Time will tell whether that happens.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news, Laddie Vitek sends along this Mike Trosino photo taken back in April at the Electric City Trolley Museum. It shows Philadelphia C-127, a 1923 double-truck Brill snow sweeper, operating for the first time at ECTM. This sweeper is the only survivor of a sizable collection of electric cars once owned by the late Ed Mitchell in Uniontown, PA. In 2011, after Mitchell died, the collection was disposed of. Nearly all of the cars had been stored outside in very poor condition and were scrapped; of the three cars stored inside, the only one that escaped the torch was C-127. It was stored in Baltimore from 2011 until 2020.

At that point, ECTM acquired the trucks from scrapped sister car C-124, which had had its trucks regauged to standard gauge by its then-owned, Grand Rapids Electric Railway. ECTM also opened up an indoor storage spot by selling CA&E 453 to IRM. Car C-127 was then moved to Scranton, and since then it has received roof and electrical work to make it operational. Restoration work is continuing, but it is now the second Philadelphia snow sweeper preserved in operational condition, joining car C-145 in Baltimore.

ALP-44 Preserved in New Jersey

The United Railroad Historical Society in New Jersey has announced via a Facebook post that it has acquired New Jersey Transit 4424, the 1996-vintage ALP-44 type electric locomotive pictured above in an image from that post. This is the first mainline electric locomotive to enter preservation in five years, since IRM acquired a (nearly identical) AEM-7 from Amtrak in 2018, and it makes 4424 the newest piece of equipment of any type on the PNAERC list, edging out LA Metro 164 after that light rail car spent just two months in the "youngest" spot.

NJT 4424 was built by Asea Brown Boveri, which was formed in 1987 by merging ASEA and Brown Boveri & Cie. ABB took over the existing ASEA AEM-7 design and updated it as the ALP-44, selling 32 of the new model to NJT and one to SEPTA. NJT ordered its locomotives in three batches between 1989 and 1996, with 4424 being part of the final 1996 order that was placed to provide added motive power for the then-new "Midtown Direct" service via the Kearny Connection. The locomotive had a short service life of just 15 years and was retired in 2011. Unlike most of the members of NJT's ALP-44 fleet, which were stored along the old Lackawanna Cutoff near Port Morris Yard and badly vandalized, 4424 was one of a handful stored safely at an NJT maintenance facility in Kearny. It was transferred to the URHS and moved this week to Boonton. There it joins a collection of mainline railroad equipment that includes two GG-1s and an E60CH, along with some derelict MU cars stored at a satellite location.