More equipment cut up at ITM

An observer from central Indiana contacted me yesterday to let me know that he had swung through Forest Park in Noblesville to see what was happening with the scrappers on-site at the Indiana Transportation Museum. It seems that they've been concentrating on some cars near the shop building, three out of the four shown in this photo.

The car nearest the camera in that shot is Chicago Elevated Railway 4454, a standard 4000-type 'L' car built by Cincinnati in 1924 and sold directly to ITM by the CTA in 1974. Back in the 1970s, and maybe into the 1980s, this car was regularly used at ITM but at some point it broke and was retired in favor of car 4293. It deteriorated badly in recent years and was in generally poor condition. Reports are that it has now been cut up with no parts salvaged, so it has been removed from the PNAERC list.

Car 4293, the second car from the camera in the linked photo, was the most recent car to run in service at ITM (around 1999 or so) and has not been scrapped. The third car in the photo was S354, previously confirmed to have been scrapped.

The car furthest from the camera in that shot, and shown better in the 2013 photo above taken by Zach Ehlers, is CTA S355. This car was originally number 4315 and was built about the same time as 4454 but was converted to a work motor in 1965. ITM acquired it in 1978 and it has never run in Noblesville. It too has apparently been cut up, trucks, motors, and all, and has been removed from the PNAERC site.

The final car confirmed to have been scrapped, and the first of the unique cars at ITM, is Indianapolis & Cincinnati 606, shown above in a 2001 photo. Built by Cincinnati in 1923, this was only surviving car from the I&C and was one of only three survivors from Union Traction, which acquired the car in 1929 and renumbered it 447. It ended up being retired by Indiana Railroad in 1938 (photo of car 446 here) and in 1977 the car body was acquired by ITM and moved to Noblesville. Intriguingly, a few cars of this series were sold to the Milwaukee Electric and rebuilt as articulated cars. The CERA book on the "TM" says one was car 606 but evidence on the side of this body proved that wrong. It's now a moot point, though, for although the car had an interesting history, its manifestly poor condition and the unfolding implosion of ITM have closed out its story. It is now off the PNAERC list.

It seems likely that this isn't the end of the torches in Noblesville; I will do what I can to keep abreast of the situation and update the PNAERC roster as appropriate.

Missing PCC car found

The above photo was recently posted online and appears to prove that a Shaker Heights PCC car, formerly "lost" for a number of years, is indeed still around and moldering away in rural Arkansas. The car in question is Shaker Heights Rapid Transit 47 and it has now been added to the PNAERC list as being under private ownership. For years this car has been on my "mysteries" list, as the last I had heard of it, it was being traded to someone in Arkansas by National Capital in 1987 for DC Transit 1540. It's one of ten PCC cars that Shaker Heights acquired from St. Louis Public Service (this car was SLPS 1773) and joins two others of the series, both owned by Buckeye Lake Trolley, in "preservation."

EDIT: The reputed owner of this car, Jim Cates, died in August 2020 according to this obituary. At this point the current status, and certainly the outlook for car 47 is uncertain at best.

Second rebuilt PCC returns to El Paso

The second El Paso PCC to see its rebuilding completed by Brookville has returned to Texas. This car is 1512, which started its life in 1937 as San Diego 513 and went to El Paso in 1950. Like the other five cars being rebuilt, it's no longer a GE air-electric; it's now an all-electric and has been fitted with the same Westinghouse-esque control equipment that Brookville is fitting to cars it rebuilds for Muni. And like the first car to be delivered from Brookville, 1506, it is in traditional El Paso mint green. Its status has been updated in the PNAERC roster and ownership has been transferred to Sun Metro, which will be operating the new heritage car line.

CTA work car scrapped in Noblesville

Reports have come in that the Indiana Transportation Museum in Noblesville, IN has started scrapping some of its traction collection. It's not clear on how many cars are being cut up but it seems the museum is starting with some of its Chicago 4000-series 'L' cars that were converted for work service. ITM has (or had) seven 4000s including two that had operated at the museum at one point or another and five that had been rebuilt by the CTA for work service. The one that is thought to have been scrapped within the past week is car S354, built in 1923 as car 4381 and rebuilt for work service in 1965. It came to ITM in 1978 and was fitted with a crude overhead platform, visible in the 2001 photo above, for use as a makeshift line car. Along with the other CTA work cars it's been in very poor shape for years. It's been removed from the PNAERC list, taking the ITM collection from 24 to 23 cars total.

It's possible that additional 4000s, and perhaps more historic cars in the museum's collection, may meet the torch in the coming days or weeks. The museum has been evicted from Forest Park in Noblesville, apparently having only until June 1st to evacuate, and from most accounts there seems to be little interest on the part of museum management in the traction collection. Any updates from folks in Indiana are appreciated.

Rebuilt Los Angeles Railway car for sale

One of the more unusual streetcars on the preservation database is Los Angeles Railway 57, preserved - after a fashion - at the Poway-Midland Railroad in Poway, California, north of San Diego. The car is a single-truck California car that led a varied life, starting out c1890 as a streetcar trailer, later rebuilt rebuilt as a (motorized) open car, and ending its LARy service life as a rail grinder. There are a lot of questions about this car's history, not least of which is what it was doing between retirement in 1948 and acquisition by the P-MRR in 1993. Regardless, it is now "restored" as a California car and operates on proper 42" gauge track using what appears to be an appropriate streetcar truck. However the car has had a heavy steel frame and gasoline engine retrofitted so that it can operate as a doodlebug - definitely an odd duck.

Regardless, the car is now being offered for sale by Ozark Mountain Railcar. It will be interesting to see where something this specialized ends up.

UPDATE
Wesley Paulson made the astute observation that P-MRR has a history of car 57 on their website here - and it's rather different than the history on the PNAERC roster! How could such a thing happen? Well, I suppose it goes back to the fact that there are three superficially similar LARy single-truckers listed on the PNAERC roster and their histories are a bit confusing.

In more recent history - we're talking the 1920s and 1930s, that kind of "recent history" - these cars were 9306, a material car; 9311, a rail grinder (not to be confused with 9310); and 9411, a sand car. All three cars started out as early single-truck cars. According to Interurbans Special 43, car 9306 started out as open car 54 and ended up being sold to Lasky Studios in 1926; car 9311 started out as trailer 405, then became work car 57, and was scrapped in 1939; and car 9411 started out as car 59 and was sold to Lasky Studios in 1926.

It should be noted that at least some of the cars listed as "scrapped" really weren't; there's a photo of LARy work car 9307 in private ownership post-LARy even though company records indicate it was scrapped. And car 9307 is one of at least a dozen other single-truckers, again generally similar to car 57, that were in work service in LA.

And now we get to the three cars on my roster. My impression was that the three extant cars (the Poway car and two derelicts owned by Travel Town) had started out as 54, 57, and 59, later to become 9306, 9311, and 9411 respectively. The P-MRR history of their car 57 states that rather than ex-LARy 57 it's actually ex-54, which suggests that my history is wrong. Apparently P-MRR has traced the history of their car through a private owner and a couple of successive movie studios right back to its sale to Lasky Studios in 1926 as car 9306.

Then that begs the question: what are the two cars at Travel Town? Are they 57 and 59, or is at least one of those an entirely different car - maybe 9307, originally LARy 51, which is known to have survived at least briefly post-LARy? Anyone know for certain?

EDIT: Thanks to Wesley Paulson for tracking down information on the two cars at Travel Town. One, car 57, has been cosmetically restored and is on display; the other, car 59, is essentially a flat car with its superstructure stored in boxes as a "kit." It, too, is on display. The histories of both of these cars are somewhat murky, but this seems to be the best information available.

A few updates

There have been a series of minor updates to the PNAERC list in recent weeks. San Francisco Municipal Railway 162, the 1914 Jewett-built "iron monster" acquired from Orange Empire in 2003, is back in San Francisco and ready to resume service. It was rebuilt by Brookville following a traffic accident in January 2014.

Across the country in Warren, Pennsylvania, three PCC cars most recently owned by the Lancaster Streetcar Company have been advertised for sale. SEPTA 2160, built in 1948, was retired around the 1990s but kept around for a while as a general utility car. Retired and sold in 2005, it was moved to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum in early 2006 before being sold to the LSC group in 2008 and moved to Warren.

SEPTA 2728, built in 1947 and retired from revenue service in the early 1990s only about five years after its general overhaul, led a slightly more high-profile existence. In 1995 it was painted in the silver/cream/blue "Philadelphia cream cheese" livery of the city's prewar PCC cars and used in fan trip service for a few years. Like 2160 it was put up for sale in 2005, bought by BSM and moved to Baltimore in 2006, and resold to LSC in 2008. This car was painted by LSC in a gaudy green/red/gold livery and plinthed at City Arts Park in Lancaster in late 2008. Sometime around 2010 it was extracted and moved to storage in Warren.

And finally there's SEPTA 2799, like 2728 built in 1947 and retired in the early 1990s. It too acquired a fancy paint job in 1995 for fan trip service, but this car was painted in 1940s Red Arrow red/cream/silver. It was damaged in 2000 and retired from fan trip use; in 2005-2006 it followed the same path as the other two cars, being sold and moved to BSM. This car was sold to the Lancaster group around 2010 and moved to Warren at that time.

There are more PCC cars moving around too. Pittsburgh 1705, which is stored at the Midwest Electric Railway Museum, has been deaccessed. Plans to sell it to a nascent museum near San Bernardino, California have apparently fallen through but the car is evidently still available.

And the Pikes Peak Historical Street Railway has placed SEPTA 2131, a sister car to 2160 described above, up for sale. This car was moved to Colorado in 1995 and for a time was on display at Sky Sox Park. The organization has said that a second ex-Philadelphia PCC car has already been sold to a local auto dealership for use as a display but I haven't been able to find any information on which car that is or precisely where it has gone.

And finally, thanks to Wesley Paulson for news that longtime trolley museum worker Bruce Thain has passed away. There is a write-up here. I didn't know Bruce personally but he contributed a great deal to a number of different trolley museums over the years and his loss will be keenly felt. He also operated a car restoration business in Guilford, Connecticut in recent years. A couple of his projects during the last decade or two were Capital Traction 27, which has now returned home to the National Capital Trolley Museum to have restoration work completed, and Boston Elevated Railway "Type 5" 5706, stored for many years at Branford but moved to Guilford in 2002. I believe that car 5706 and Atlantic City 250, owned by Branford, are still in Guilford.

New Haven MU car moves

The last New Haven "washboard" MU club car, and one of only three "washboards" still in existence, is being moved to the Danbury Railway Museum. New Haven 5111 has been stored in poor condition in Old Saybrook, Connecticut for a number of years, and a few years back was deaccessed by the Railroad Museum of New England. It has now been acquired by an individual who is moving it to Danbury. It left Old Saybrook on April 10th.

This is a fairly historic car; the only other surviving "washboards" are two combines that are already preserved in Danbury. A third combine preserved in Ohio was scrapped just a year or two ago. Car 5111's interior is gutted and it suffers from fire damage dating to 2006 but the car is thought to be mechanically fairly complete.