Bakersfield update

By pure chance I stumbled across this article, posted last month on Bakersfield.com. It answers a question I've had for quite a while: what is the condition and status of Bakersfield & Kern 10?

I happened across a mention of B&K 10 a number of years back. It's a double-truck California car built by the American Car Company in early 1912 (ordered at the end of 1911), and was said to be at the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield, California, but other than that I knew basically nothing about it. I managed to find a reference or two that confirmed the car's presence at the museum but had never seen a photo of it - until now.

It's a body, which I had pretty much assumed (the B&K abandoned streetcar service in Bakersfield around 1941 from what I can tell), but as car bodies go it looks halfway decent. It's a handsome deck-roof car that bears a strong resemblance to San Jose Railway 124, another 1912 American-built California car which is preserved up in San Jose (though SJR 124 has a longer closed section).

Furthermore, B&K 10 is currently undergoing a cosmetic restoration. It has been placed in a newly-renovated event space at the Kern County Museum and a small crew seems to be working on rehabbing it. So I've updated its condition and have also added a few tidbits of information I found, like overall length and seating capacity. I still don't know what control, motors, brakes, or pump it would have had in service, so if you have any books on the B&K then let me know what you find.

And while I'm at it, I may as well mention that this is not the only B&K car preserved. Car 4, a single-truck California car dating to 1900, is preserved at SCRM in Perris and was fully restored from car body status itself. It was retired from passenger service (supposedly due to a run-in with an AT&SF steam engine) and made into a work car in 1912, right about the time car 10 was being delivered from the American plant in St. Louis.

The "Philly Six" quandary

Photos were posted recently on Facebook by someone named James Pero. Taken this past weekend, they show the condition of the six Philadelphia PCC cars stored behind an old factory building on Erie Avenue on the north side of the city. Their condition is not good, and the extent to which "not good" is an understatement puts me in a bit of a quandary. Most of the cars have had at least one end cut off of them within the last couple of years - three cars are missing about 10' from the back end of the car, another car is missing about 10' from its front end, and one car had its roof cut open as if with a giant can opener. So the question is, do these cars still belong on the PNAERC list?

Car 2760 is at the west end of the string and is missing its rear end. James Pero photo.

I'm going to say "no, they don't." I've got a few cars on the list that are missing an end, or even two. But for the most part those are relatively standard streetcars missing a platform, so the car's body is substantially intact. Furthermore, by and large, their owners acquired them knowing about their missing ends and intend to preserve them anyway. Most plan on making the cars whole again someday. 

Car 2141 is missing its front end, roughly from the bolster forward. James Pero photo.

The six PCC cars in Philadelphia are not like this. They've been privately owned since they were sold by SEPTA in 1996. For a few years they were stored on the south side of the city in a lot at the corner of Swanson and Wolf. In 2004 all six cars were carted up to Erie Avenue, where they were set behind a large building, just along the north side of the Northeast Corridor. They've sat there for 16 years in steadily deteriorating condition. As recently as 2017 they were listed for sale online.

Car 2171 has had its rear end removed and you can see daylight through the body. James Pero photo.

Recently the six cars have started to lose large pieces. The care and consistency with which sections are being removed from these cars suggests that components are being removed for a purpose, likely for reuse somewhere else. There are a couple of transit agencies (including SEPTA itself) with Philadelphia PCC's in daily use so perhaps these cars are being cannibalized for wreck repair or similar purposes. I don't know. But more to the point, there's virtually no chance that any of the PCC cars in Philadephia that have had big pieces removed will ultimately survive. They're not very historically significant; it would be a lot of work to make the cars whole again; and the cars are not being kept around for the purpose of ultimate preservation anyway.

Car 2760 still has both of its ends but its roof has been torn open for reasons unknown. James Pero photo.

As such, I'm removing five of the six cars from the PNAERC roster. The sixth, car 2717, still appears to be largely complete (albeit in wretched shape) so it's being kept on the list for now. It is unlikely that it will survive for too long, but I suppose you never know. The five remaining cars have been removed from the list: 2141, which had its front end removed; 2171, 2761, and 2796, all with their back ends removed; and 2760, which had its roof torn up. All were built by St. Louis Car Company in 1947-1948. More than 70 similar or identical examples exist elsewhere, either in regular transit use or in museums. While these five cars are still in existence, of a sort, my opinion is that they no longer qualify as "preserved" nor do they stand a reasonable chance of long-term survival.

Car 2760, at the east end of the string, had its back end removed. James Pero photo.

Tampa double-truck Birney found

Many thanks to Joel Salomon, who was able to track down one of my missing cars. He was able to get hold of Brian Allen from Florida, who confirmed that Tampa Electric 402, which was last seen in 2016 on a trailer but in an unknown location, is at a company called Rustic Steel on the north side of Tampa. In fact it's easily visible from Business Route 41 (here's the requisite Street View link from which I got the above image). Rustic Steel appears to be some kind of boutique metal fabrication and architectural salvage company and as best I can figure, car 402 is serving mainly as a lawn ornament at the moment. The car has been switched from Tampa Historic Streetcar ownership to Rustic Steel ownership.

So it's not the best outcome for the car and its future is still somewhat questionable, especially given its rather banged-up condition. Back about 20 years ago, when there was a streetcar preservation group in Tampa that was trying to get the city to build a heritage trolley line, car 402 was going to be the second restored Tampa Electric car after Birney 163. The heritage line was built using Gomaco double-truckers and the Birney is still there, I think in occasional use, but the original historic streetcar group seems to have collapsed. Their work car was most likely demolished (see this recent post) and car 402 ended up as, well, a lawn ornament. Besides being one of only two surviving Tampa streetcars, car 402 is also thought to be the last remaining "true" double-truck Birney built by American. However double-truck Birneys built by other companies survive, as do a handful of American-built double-truckers of a design that postdates the Birney.

New car added to list

I was alerted, by a post on a Facebook group by Murphy Zane Jenkins-Henson, to the fact that there is a car from the Southwest Missouri that is preserved, and even on public display, but missing from my list. And we can't have that.

And here it is, in all of its dubious glory, on public display in Carterville, Missouri. It says "No. 66" on the side but that's not its number - presumably that was put on there because it's along Route 66. And the best part is that it is next door to, and may indeed be owned by, the Superman Museum (which doubles as an ice cream parlor). So now the Superman Museum is included on PNAERC.

The Southwest Missouri did have a car numbered 66 but it was a big deck-roof wood car similar to car 60, preserved in Webb City. This car, or what remains of it, is definitely from the 91-95 series of lightweight suburban cars that were turned out by Southwest Missouri's Webb City shops in 1927. They were homely looking cars (see here for an in-service photo) but were the most modern to run on the system and probably ran until the end of electrified passenger service in 1938. What information I have on these cars comes from a book called "Tri-State Traction" by Edward Conrad and that books says that these cars had K-84 controllers, which is the first reference I've come across to that type. So that could be a typo, I don't know. The book also says that three of these cars - 91, 93, and one other - were sold in 1940 for use as a restaurant in Chetopa, Kansas. In 1984 two were scrapped and the third was brought to Carterville, where it remains.

Jersey Shore streetcar added to list

Many thanks to Bill Wall, who has alerted me to an article written in the latest Friends of Philadelphia Trolleys newsletter by another friend of the blog, Matt Nawn. The article is about the discovery of a heretofore unknown streetcar that has been preserved by the Peter Herdic Transportation Museum in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The car, whose number is uncertain, was built in 1894 for the Electric Traction Company of Philadelphia (later Union Traction, later Philadelphia Rapid Transit) as a single-truck open car. Matt's article says that three PRT open cars numbered 86, 939, and 942 were sold at some point to the Jersey Shore Street Railway in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, where they became JSSR 101-103. Later still the cars were apparently rebuilt as closed cars and renumbered again as JSSR 14-16 (or I may have that renumbering backwards, I'm not positive). JSSR was abandoned in 1930 so this particular car, which is one of these three ex-PRT converted open cars, was retired no later than that year.

Its body has now shown up under a tarp on the lawn of the PHTM in Williamsport as shown above in a Google Street View image. The museum is city-owned, and seems to be well-funded, so perhaps a cosmetic restoration of this car is in store. As for me, I've added it to the list along with a note about its likely fleet number, but I'd also be interested in more information about it - like who built it and when it got sold to Jersey Shore. This information may simply not exist, but if anyone has better records on JSSR than I do (which doesn't say much) then any help is appreciated. Thank you!

I should also take a moment to point out that of all the small hamlets in Pennsylvania that once boasted electric railways, Jersey Shore really stands out for the number of its electric cars that are still around. Besides this new car - which admittedly is probably more significant as an early single-truck Philadelphia car than a Jersey Shore car - there's also JSSR single-truck closed car number 4, which is privately owned and undergoing restoration, and there's Jersey Shore & Antes Fort 3, an interurban car that ran out of the city and is now preserved at PTM.

Housekeeping

I've decided that it's time to a bit of housekeeping. Usually when a piece of historic electric equipment enters preservation, it's relatively easy to find out about because people want to publicize it (though that doesn't always mean I've got everything I need to add a car to the PNAERC list). But when something goes from "preserved" to "gone" it can often be difficult to figure out. Museums are understandably reticent about broadcasting that they've disposed of a car, even in cases where equipment was acquired solely for parts. It's especially difficult to find information in cases where the owning organization went out of business or the private owner died or dropped off the face of the earth.

So there are a few cars that I've decided to remove from the list even though I'm not 100% certain they're actually gone. These are "missing and presumed lost" - and who knows, maybe they'll resurface and I can re-add them. If you have solid information one way or another about any of these cars, please let me know.

Kansas City Clay County & St. Joseph 54 is/was an all-steel freight motor built by Cincinnati in 1913 for that line. It was built to a fairly lightweight design, matching the line's passenger cars, and was retired in 1933. The body was acquired around 1991 by a KCCC&StJ historian who styled himself the Missouri Short Line and it was stored in Dearborn, MO along the old interurban route. I recall seeing this car in person around 2004, give or take, and boy was it rough. Anyway, I believe the owner died some years back now, and aerial photos suggest that it's no longer located where I remember it sitting. It may have been moved but it's more likely that it's gone. UPDATE: Click here for the rest of the story!

El Paso City Lines 90 is/was a turtleback-roof steel-sided streetcar of typical Stone & Webster design that was built by St. Louis in 1913 for service in El Paso. It was owned by the late Ron Dawson, historian and aficionado of all things El Paso streetcar, but I saw a photo of (what I believe was) this car once and it was really a skeleton - not much beyond the steel frame remained. It may still be sitting in a field in west Texas somewhere but it's not at all unlikely that it's been scrapped.

This is kind of an interesting one: San Antonio Public Service 205 was around at least as late as 2012, and at the time was privately owned and stored inside a building in Boerne, Texas (see here for more on this). It is/was a pretty typical 1905 American Car Company-built streetcar, rebuilt by SAPS with steel sides, but was a body and was not in very good shape. Some years back the owner apparently died so it's as likely as not that the car has since been bulldozed or otherwise disposed of.

South Carolina Power Company 302 is actually two cars, but I never figured out the fleet number of the second one so this was always the only car listed on the PNAERC roster. Back in 2006 a real estate developer found these two identical streetcars in a house that was being torn down and decided to save them for potential preservation. They are/were very unusual cars: built by Cincinnati in 1918, small, low-floor, center-entrance trailers, though they may have been motorized at one point. Anyway, shortly after they were saved the real estate market collapsed and plans for the two cars were shelved. For a while they were stored in a former industrial area on the north side of Charleston (they're visible on a 2011 Google Street View image) but by 2016 the entire area had been cleared. My assumption is that the two cars were cut up.

Lackawanna MU car 4633 is/was just like every other Lackawanna motor car built by Pullman in 1930. To say this one is NOT very historically significant is a bit of an understatement. Anyway, it is/was one of two Lackawanna MU cars that were owned by the same person behind Buckeye Lake Trolley, but this pair was presumably too unwieldy to truck to the BLT property. I recall seeing the pair spotted next to a grain elevator on the east side of Columbus about 20 years ago. The other car ended up at the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum, where it still sits, but for whatever reason 4633 made its way to Toledo where it spent the late 2000s sitting at the end of a track in Sumner Yard in increasingly deplorable condition (it's easily visible on a 2011 Google Street view image). By 2014 the car had disappeared. I'm guessing, though I cannot confirm, that it was scrapped.

I don't know much about the story of Tampa streetcar preservation in the 1990s and 2000s. One Tampa Birney, car 163, was preserved, restored from a body, and operated for a time on the heritage trolley line there. I believe that this effort started out with an historical group that also owned a Tampa double-truck Birney that has since disappeared (UPDATE: the Birney has been found) and a St. Petersburg Municipal Railway work car. It's this work car body, which never had a fleet number, that I'm removing from my list. For a number of years, until sometime around 2010, it sat alongside the heritage trolley line at 5th Ave and 13th Street (it's visible on a 2008 image from Google Street View). But then it disappeared and the property has more recently been redeveloped. Given its obviously mediocre-to-poor condition, limited usefulness, and generally low appeal, coupled with the apparent dissolution of the collection of original Tampa-area streetcars, my best guess is that this car is no more.

As alluded to before, the removal of these cars is based on the assumption that they are more likely gone than still extant. I would love to be proven wrong on at least some of these, and if you have any information on any of this equipment, please drop me a line.

Public Service 26 project update

Many thanks to Matt Nawn of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, who has sent along this update and photos detailing the restoration of Public Service Coordinated Transport 26. -Frank

Car 26 in service in 1970 - Matt Nawn Collection

The Restoration of PSCT #26

The Baltimore Streetcar Museum acquired former PSCT/TNJ/NJ Transit PCC Car #26 in February 2014 as part of the effort led by Bill Wall to find homes for the remaining PCC cars which had been stored for many years following their retirement from the Newark City Subway in August 2001.  The rationale for BSM acquiring #26 was to provide an additional car to serve the function largely provided by BSM's former SEPTA PCC Car #2168; namely, to provide a vehicle that was solid, reliable, easy to operate and easy to maintain that could handle a significant part of the day to day public operations at the museum, thus helping to conserve the older cars in the museum collection, a number of which are over 100 years old.  SEPTA #2168 has been a great success for the museum, in both filling the role of day to day operations (pre-pandemic) and in bringing in a number of new volunteers and donors.  Due to its wide carbody width, Car #26 also is an ideal vehicle to utilize with a platform mounted wheelchair lift to ensure all visitors can enjoy a vintage streetcar ride.

From 2014 until 2018, work progressed, slowly at first, to return the car to operation after many years of storage.  Thankfully, significant portions of the control wiring in Car #26 were replaced during its last decade of service, making restoration to operation quite feasible.  In order to make the car operable on BSM's wide gauge trackage, a set of SEPTA broad gauge trucks were obtained and regauged by museum volunteers from SEPTA's Philadelphia track gauge to Baltimore's even wider track gauge.  (In fact, two sets of former SEPTA trucks were on hand; one set to test the car with and a second set which was previously overhauled for use when the car is released for public operation).   The former SEPTA trucks utilized Westinghouse shaft brake actuators, and in order to use these components with the car's General Electric control system (and make the car as electrically identical to former SEPTA #2168 as possible), substantial work was performed to modify the car's control system, including replacement of a number of components and significant wiring changes.  The conversion work was substantially completed and successfully tested during a special event in November 2018.

Successful test run at BSM, November 2018. Bill Monaghan Photo.

While the electrical work was progressing, fundraising began in earnest for a carbody restoration.  To date, substantial funds have been received from museum benefactors, two local NRHS chapters, as well as grants from the 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation and the National Railway Historical Society's Heritage Grants program.  The project team developed a set specifications for an outside contractor to perform the carbody restoration and repainting, and the contract was awarded to Rail Mechanical Services, Inc. of Columbia, PA with work commencing in January 2019 following highway transport of the car from Baltimore to Columbia.

Media blasting car 26. Harry Donahue Photo.

The use of an outside contractor like RMS enabled a comprehensive restoration of the carbody, including repairs to the roof, ends, and lower carbody.  The extent of the work has included removal of the lower carbody "rub rail" for effective rust removal and fabrication and installation of new steel in any areas where deterioration was found.  A master carpenter hired directly by BSM fabricated new doors to original plans (provided by Minnesota Streetcar Museum) as well as new roofwalks and cleats.  Approximately nine layers of paint was removed from the carbody, including the original Twin City Lines yellow and cream paint, indicating this was the first time the carbody had been stripped to bare steel since the car was constructed.  The BSM project team overseeing the work involves many of the same people who managed the restoration work on SEPTA #2168, PTC #2743 (at Rockhill Trolley Museum), and the more limited restoration of sister car PSCT #6 (also at Rockhill), so the lessons learned from these projects can be applied to #26.

Michael Lawson with a restored farebox for car 26. Matt Nawn Photo.

Based upon the strong financial support of the project, the restoration scope was expanded to include the interior.  This was a fortuitous change, as disassembly and restoration of the interior enabled repairs to structural areas of the car that would otherwise have been difficult to access, as well repairs to the floor and replacement of the deteriorating auxiliary heaters.  The restoration scope included structural repairs to all of the seat frames, reupholstering of all seats (by a different vendor) with material matching what the car used prior to 1985, and replacement of all Lexan windows and restoration of the window frames (performed by a different contractor and museum volunteers).  All standee windows are being replaced with new seals and safety glass, with the glass tinted to match the green color used in both the Twin Cities as well as for many years in Newark.

Sample reupholstered seat

Structural repairs and new heaters

Rear corner and seat frame repairs

The restored car will represent its circa 1964 appearance when completed, complete with PSCT gray, blue, and off-white exterior colors; white fleet numerals, golden glow headlight, and period appropriate details and fittings.  The reasons for this era are two-fold; a 1964 appearance represents what public transit looked like shortly after Baltimore retired its last streetcars in late 1963, and it also makes the restored car slightly different in appearance from restored sister car #6 at the Rockhill Trolley Museum.  In order to present the car in authentic appearance to the maximum extent possible, museum volunteers have found and/or restored many items from this era including the correct style farebox, fare register, Public Service "TAKE ONE" boxes, builder's plate, period and location appropriate interior advertisements, along with the previously mentioned interior upholstery, replacement golden glow headlight, correct color standee windows, and carefully matched interior and exterior colors.  Additionally, the car's roof light has been removed, rock guard over the windshield removed, an original set of windshield frames has been restored, and the roof vent will be reinstalled over the front section of the roof (which had been removed when the pantograph frame was mounted on the car, itself since removed).

Repairs to the door side of the car

Repairs to the front corner of the car

New safety glass windows

The car is slated to return to BSM early in 2021 where additional electrical work, a truck swap, and final detail work not included in the restoration contract will be completed.  Barring any substantial delays due to COVID-19, a completion ceremony is planned for August 2021 to coincide with the 20th Anniversary of the car's retirement from regular service.

Interior progress as of November 2020

Along with museum benefactors and organizations providing financial support, the restoration of PSCT #26 has been fortunate to have the support of other organizations, particularly Bill Wall from Branford Electric Railway Association and the Minneapolis Streetcar Museum, as well as the retired shop foreman from the Newark City Subway.  The PSCT #26 team at Baltimore Streetcar Museum greatly appreciates the support received to date and looks forward to the future!

Exterior of car 26 as of November 2020

More information on the project can be found on YouTube here.