AEM7 Arrives in Danbury

It seems the Danbury Railway Museum's collection of mainline electric collection is growing again. According to this video (source of the screen shot above), Amtrak 917, an AEM7 built by Electro-Motive in 1981, has been moved to the DRM property from its former storage location at a shipping terminal in Rhode Island.* This makes 917 the third AEM7 preserved, after 915 at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and 945 at the Illinois Railway Museum. Of the three, it is the only example that was upgraded to AC traction around 2000 or so; the other two retain their original DC motors. This addition puts the list at 2,089 pieces of equipment.

As I wrote here, DRM is now in the same league as IRM and RRMofPA - not coincidentally, the other two owners of AEM7s - when it comes to its mainline electric collection. DRM now has 11 pieces of mainline electric equipment, compared with nine at RRMofPA and 11 at IRM. DRM might not have a locomotive of such national significance as Strasburg's DD1, or a crowd pleaser quite like the operable South Shore 803 in Union, but Danbury's collection includes unique pieces like the Grand Central Terminal wrecker, the last NYC T-Motor, and all three surviving New Haven "washboard" MU cars. Now, all they need is a GG1!

*EDIT: It appears that the AEM7 actually arrived in Danbury on June 7th.

North Shore 228 Restored

Hot on the heels of Illinois Terminal line car 1702 being outshopped by IRM, another Midwestern organization has restored and operated a piece of non-revenue equipment that hadn't run since retirement. This is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 228, a box motor (known as an "MD car," or merchandise despatch car, on the North Shore) built by Cincinnati Car Company in 1922 and just completed at the East Troy Electric Railroad. It's shown above in a photo from this Facebook group depicting a test run a few weeks ago; its official debut was this weekend, like IT 1702 during a private event.

Car 228 was one of an ill-fated trio of electric cars that made their way to the Indiana Railway Museum in Westport, Indiana, around 1963. The three cars - 228, North Shore combine 250, and Chicago Aurora & Elgin steel-sheathed wood coach 318 - were purchased from the Westport group by The Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society (TWERHS), which at the time operated over the East Troy line, around 1971. The two North Shore cars made it to TWERHS intact, but car 318 had its ends crushed during a Penn Central switching accident and was later scrapped for parts in Mukwonago.

The two North Shore cars were in rough shape, though. Combine 250 was acquired by IRM when TWERHS folded in 1988 and later scrapped; MD car 228 stayed in East Troy and work on rebuilding it began but was suspended for some 25 or 30 years. In 2022, though, the MD car went into ETER's new shop building in Mukwonago to complete the job. Of the five North Shore MD cars preserved, this is one of two that is operational and is the only one to have undergone a complete restoration.

Whiskey Island Car Pusher Finds New Home

A few weeks ago, we posted a story here about the last Hulett ore unloaders in existence - a pair of disassembled Huletts stored at Whiskey Island in Cleveland - being threatened, along with a trio of diminutive narrow-gauge electric car pushers, or shunters, that sat with them. While I don't believe any hopeful news has emerged on the Huletts themselves, one of the three car pushers has found a new home. The Port of Cleveland has posted here that Pennsylvania Railroad 1, one of the three car pushers at Whiskey Island, was loaded onto a truck and removed from the site for preservation. The locomotive is a 1912 Baldwin-Westinghouse, identical (I believe) to this one, which is preserved in Youngstown. The photo above is from the Port of Cleveland's Facebook post.

Its destination is apparently Buckeye Lake, Ohio, but it's not owned by Buckeye Lake Trolley. It's the first piece of equipment on the PNAERC list under the ownership of the American Industrial Mining Company Museum, or AIMCM, which is a geographically dispersed organization focused on mining and industrial equipment preservation. The group has its main workshop site at Buckeye Lake, on the same property as Buckeye Lake Trolley, and has a public exhibition site in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. AIMCM also owns a pair of Toronto CLRVs, 4024 and 4170, but those two cars are stored at the Halton County Radial Railway in Ontario and are currently listed with that organization's collection on PNAERC.

Two more PRR car pushers are still in the weeds at Whiskey Island awaiting possible salvation. One is reputedly numbered 2, but the third isn't on PNAERC because I don't have a fleet number or any other information on it. Interested in a very large and ungainly-looking lawn ornament?

Illinois Terminal Line Car Runs

As outlined on our sister Hicks Car Works blog here and here, the Illinois Railway Museum has gotten its Illinois Terminal line car, IT 1702, operating for the first time since it left the IT in 1958. Museum volunteers began working on restoring the car's body in 2021, work that was completed in early 2024, and the car's control system was rebuilt over the last five months or so to get it operating for an event this past weekend.

The car's status on PNAERC has been updated from "undergoing restoration" to "operated occasionally." Another update at IRM has been made to IT 415, the first car ever to run at the museum back in 1966. This lightweight interurban was taken out of service in 2020 for exterior restoration, and that work was completed within the past couple of weeks as well. Its status has been updated to "operated often," as it has long been a mainstay of public operations at IRM and is expected to return to a prominent role.

Car 54, There You Are

Back about three years ago, in this post, I described removing several cars from the PNAERC list that had simply gone missing. Without any recent news, I presumed that the cars - most of which had been in private hands - were gone. I'm happy to say that the very first one on that list has now turned up intact!

Kansas City Clay County & St. Joseph 54 is a rather unusual all-steel box motor, one of only two cars still in existence from that line and the only box motor. It's shown above in a photo taken, and posted on Facebook, about two weeks ago by Mr. Bob Matthys of Camden Point, Missouri. Mr. Matthys is apparently the new owner of car 54; judging from the photos, the car had been abandoned derelict in a grove of trees on a farm, but Mr. Matthys purchased the car, cleared the trees as shown below, and hauled it off the farm.

I'm not sure what the long-term plans for car 54 are, but it appears to be on a substantial trailer and not in immediate danger of dissolving. I believe this car has the same construction as the KCCC&StJ's passenger cars, which means it has a steel roof, which has presumably helped it. With luck, perhaps it will be fixed up for display on its home territory. Thanks to Johnny Myers for making me aware of this.

Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200 Update

Many thanks to Thomas Mafrici, who has sent along an update of the progress on Syracuse Lake Shore & Northern 200, which he owns. The rebuilding of this car, which he acquired as a true cadaver, is one of the most impressive traction restoration projects underway right now, and it's fascinating to see the progress on this virtually frame-up rebuild of a classic 1906 Cincinnati-built wooden interurban.

A lot of progress has clearly been made on the roof framing since the last update in early 2023. 

The first two photos are of the "good side" of the car, in terms of condition, and show all the work that has gone into recreating the ends of the car, both of which were essentially gone.

Thomas reports that he's just finished framing out the "bad side" of the car, shown here. 

The new posts and roof carlines look beautiful.

Finally, a photo taken of the car's interior showing all the new wood in the roof.

EDIT: Thomas sent along a few more progress photos, shown below - enjoy!

The Kerwin Rail Grinder

I was looking up something in a 1911 Electric Railway Journal available on the Smithsonian website and started idly perusing the publication, as you do. I happened upon this article, which caught my eye immediately.

That looks familiar, I thought. And sure enough, I was right. It's an unmistakable match for Servicio de Transportes Electricos del Distrito Federal 100, a rail grinder preserved at the transit agency's museum in Mexico City.

I don't have much info on SDTE 100, and in fact it has heretofore been listed as being a 1900 product of Brill. But, of course, I couldn't find anything about it in the Brill order books, and now I know why. I've updated its builder to the Kerwin Machine Company and removed the year built; I'd guess it's likely around 1910 but can't be sure. The rail grinder in Mexico City has been modified somewhat - it's lost the "skate" hanging off the rear and has had a small platform built onto the front with a dash panel and possibly a controller - but it's got to be a Kerwin. (Given that Kerwin was based in Detroit; that city was using these grinders as of 1911; and Mexico City bought a bunch of Detroit PCCs in the 1950s, it's tempting to wonder whether this critter ran in Detroit and came to Mexico City secondhand. But there's no evidence for that, and rail grinders of this description don't appear at all in my CERA book on Detroit Street Railway.)

SDTE 100 is unassuming but is pretty unusual, actually. First, it's one of only two cars on the list with an "A1" wheel arrangement, designating four wheels and a single motor (the other is the homebuilt Ponemah Mills line car at the Connecticut Trolley Museum). It's also the only thing on the list built by Kerwin. More importantly, it's one of only 12 electric railway rail grinders preserved, and one of only five built for that purpose (the other seven were rebuilt from older streetcars). Of those five, two (one each at the National Museum of Transport and Southern California Railway Museum) sport more typical "house" construction. That leaves only this and two similarly diminutive (and skeletal) grinders built by the Goldschmidt Thermit Company, both preserved at Seashore.