Philadelphia snow sweeper scrapped

Word comes along that Philadelphia snow sweeper C-124 has been parted out and scrapped. This was a standard 1923 Brill-built double-truck sweeper, identical to several others in preservation, that was in service into the early 1970s. It initially went to the Ohio Railway Museum in Worthington but at some later point, likely in the 1980s or early 1990s, it was sold to the owner of the Waterfront Electric in Toledo. This later became the Grand Rapids Electric Railway in Grand Rapids, Ohio but was never open to the public in that location. Most of the equipment at the GRER site went to Northern Ohio a few years back but two cars remained and, in 2014, were acquired by the adjacent Toledo Lake Erie & Western tourist railroad. Sweeper C-124 was one of these and it was sold to be stripped for parts for other preserved sweepers of this series.

Even with the loss of C-124 there are nine of these big Philadelphia sweepers preserved. They're in a range of conditions, from grounded body to operating car, but at least two have been stored inside ever since they left service and there's no risk of the type going extinct or even coming close. As for the TLE&W, the last remaining electric car from the GRER collection left in situ is Chicago Transit Authority 4439, still stored inside.

Last Electric Car Leaves Forest Park

The last electric car has officially departed Forest Park and the old Indiana Transportation Museum site, drawing to a close 50 years of traction preservation at that site. The dubious honor went to Lackawanna 4328, a standard high-roof MU trailer built in 1917, which was acquired by the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum. At HVRM it joins two much newer mainline MU cars, Illinois Central "Highliners," as well as a pair of privately-owned South Shore coaches. There are still three electric cars owned by ITM on the PNAERC roster, all of them Lackawanna MU cars identical to 4328 (except that they're in much worse condition), but they're stored on a siding in Cicero, Indiana to the north of Noblesville. Rumor has it that the owner of that siding - recall that ITM has never owned a square foot of land, so even the equipment they own that wasn't seized by the city of Noblesville is on land owned by someone else - has sued ITM so those cars may be leaving at some point in the near future as well. Of course there's plenty of steam road equipment still in Forest Park too, but that collection has begun to leave as well, starting with an L&N diner moved to Tennessee this week.

ITM started out as the Indiana Museum of Transportation and Communication, or IMOTAC, and initially its collection was heavily traction-oriented. The organization's first car, whose acquisition predated the move to Forest Park by a few years, was Chicago Aurora & Elgin 308; public operation was for many years limited to electric cars; and during the museum's first decade only a few pieces of mainline railroad equipment were obtained. But by the early 1980s, with the ability to operate over the old Nickel Plate mainline into Indianapolis and the leasing of NKP Mikado 587, the focus changed to running mainline steam and diesel excursions. The most successful and long-lasting of these were the Fair Trains to the state fairgrounds and by the early 2000s the museum's preservation mission had largely become secondary to maintaining the Fair Train operation. The last electric car ran around 1999 and after that the traction collection languished until the museum lost its lease on the land in the park last year. Offers by the city of Noblesville to give ITM a year to evacuate were met by lawsuits and an eviction notice was served in July. ITM as an organization still exists, with some equipment in poor condition in Cicero and a few other pieces extracted in early July scattered around the state, but it is gone from Forest Park forever.

Trenton Streetcar to be Preserved

Against all odds, it would appear that the decrepit husk of the last surviving Trenton streetcar is headed for preservation and perhaps even restoration. Trenton Street Railway 288 - as of today added to the PNAERC roster - was discovered this fall while a house in Hamilton, New Jersey was being demolished. Buried within the structure of the house, and hidden by wall paneling for decades, was the body of a 1914 Brill-built deck-roof streetcar. Both platforms are gone, as is the entire interior including walls and ceiling, but examination of exterior paneling revealed the car's number.

While there's not much left to this car, it is historic as the last streetcar from New Jersey's capital city and one of very, very few non-Newark/PSCT streetcars from the Garden State to survive. A News 12 story now says that car 288 is going to be shipped to Iowa, presumably to Gomaco, for a restoration to be funded by an organization called Liberty Historic Railway. I confess I'd never heard of LHR but they've funded a number of restoration projects in their home state including a few ship and bus restorations. They've got their work cut out for them with Trenton 288 but if they can make this sow's ear into a silk purse it will be a truly remarkable transformation.

El Paso heritage operation opens

From our friend Bruce Wells, of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, comes a write-up and photos showing opening day for the El Paso heritage streetcar line operated by Sun Metro. There were at least three or four PCC cars in operation on opening day and they're the same cars, albeit heavily rebuilt, that ran the (previous) last streetcar operation in the city back in 1974. A total of six ex-El Paso (originally San Diego) prewar PCC cars are being rebuilt by Brookville and to my knowledge only one car has yet to return home from Pennsylvania. An additional three cars are stored at a Sun Metro facility adjacent to the El Paso airport, where all nine cars spent years stored derelict near the end of a runway.

Previously I'd been switching ownership for these cars from Paso del Norte Streetcar Preservation Society - to which they'd been loaned by the city of El Paso since the 1980s - over to Sun Metro as each car returned from rebuild, but it seems clear that PNSPS is pretty much out of the PCC game so I've switched ownership for all nine cars to Sun Metro. That leaves one car owned by PNSPS: El Paso 90, a 1913 Stone & Webster car that at last report was largely a shell. That was a few years back and its current condition and whereabouts are unknown.

PCC on the move

The above photo, taken by Joe Krepps, was posted on the "Railroads of York, PA" group on Facebook yesterday. The car in the picture, New Jersey Transit 24, was heading westbound through York. This brings up an interesting question: where is it going?

Car 24 is one of the few "orphans" left among the old Newark PCC fleet. Of the 25 preserved PCC cars from that system, 11 went to Muni, eight went to established trolley museums, one went to San Diego, and one was kept by NJT for historic purposes, leaving four in a state of limbo to one extent or another. Car 13 is stored in Boonton, close to home; two others are stored in an out-of-state location; and that leaves car 24, which until yesterday (apparently) was stored at UTC/RAS, a small industrial firm in the Philadelphia suburbs. I had formerly thought that the car was destined for San Diego but it's not certain that's the case. Anyone know where it's going? Until I can answer that I've changed its status to "unknown."

UPDATE: Mystery solved, more or less - in mid-2020 car 24 turned up in Signal Hill, California.

Indianapolis Peter Witt moved to new home

The latest electric car to leave the old Indiana Transportation Museum site in Forest Park, Noblesville is Indianapolis Railways 153. The news, and the photo above, come from a Facebook post (no log-in required) by the Hoosier Heartland Trolley Company. HHTC has moved car 153 to its site where it is being kept under cover along with the organization's three interurban cars.

Car 153 is very historic. It's the last electric streetcar from Indianapolis and is arguably the most modern streetcar preserved from before the streamliner/PCC era (Portland 813 is of the same vintage but has older-style K-control, rather than 153's PCM control, and lacks the more modern Peter Witt door arrangement). As such it's a significant piece, but unfortunately it has suffered grievously during its years of neglect in Forest Park. It was very close to being scrapped but HHTC stepped in and saved the car, installing steel beams to reinforce the underframe to allow the car to be moved. And of course even when ITM acquired the car in the 1970s it was a body, lacking trucks, control, and an interior.

One That Got Away

Wesley Paulson, from the National Capital Trolley Museum, sends this fascinating account of a rather old car that nearly made it. Wesley writes...

Joel Salomon collection

Recently, Joel Salomon sent me a photo from 1960 of a car body stored at the 7th Street SW yard of DC Transit Company.   I recognized the photo of the body of Capital Traction #1, a street car mail trailer.  In his book 100 Years of Capital Traction author LeRoy O. King lists the car as constructed as a horse car by Stephenson in the 1870s and rebuilt by the Company shops as a cable car mail trailer in 1895.   A mail slot in the side of the car allows pedestrians to drop off mail en route.  In the years following the end of mail service in 1913, the Company removes the platforms and the body is used as a construction trailer by the transit company.   CTCo #1 was acquired by the fledgling Washington Electric Railway Historical Society (WERHS) in the 1950s.   The Society also acquired a Brill 21E truck from Hagerstown and Frederick for use under the car.  There is little documentation about the status of the car body during WERHS ownership and its eventual transfer to the collection of National Capital Trolley Museum in the 1960s. 

L.O. King photo, Rogers Collection. MRHL

Capital Traction Mail Car 1, Friendship Heights. Loop, c-1936, fr. Truax-Rogers Collection

Following the end of transit operations in 1962, CTCo #1 and the Brill truck were stored outdoors at an Army Depot at Curtis Bay in Baltimore.  As was typical of many trolley museum efforts nationally at the time, the mail car deteriorated in outdoor storage during the 1960s while the Museum struggled to find a permanent home.  In the early 1970s Museum member Lee Rogers salvaged several remaining pieces of the car body, including at least one platform door and a platform bonnet, that were then stored in his basement.  The Brill truck was moved to the Museum at that time.  Following the death of Rogers, the Museum moved the parts to storage at the Museum.   The Brill 21E truck was traded to Shore Line Trolley Museum in 2002.

A short video clip on YouTube shows a transfer of mail to CTCo #1 on Pennsylvania Ave in 1903, where the car is pulled by a single-truck open motor car.

Mail service continued on streetcars until the Cabin John Line was abandoned in 1960.  Streetcars carried a daily mail bag between the Main Post Office on North Capitol Street to the Cabin John Post Office in Maryland.

Many thanks to Wesley for putting together this history of a very interesting car. -Frank