New York subway pump car added to list

Thanks to Bill Wall for sending me information on a car that was not on the PNAERC list until now: New York City Transit Authority 5001. This is the only "pump car" on the list and it was built for use in pumping out flooded subway tunnels. It was constructed by ACF in 1918 on the same order as car 5000 but unlike that car is not motorized, since it was designed to be shoved into flooded portions of the subway. The above photo, sent by Bill, shows the car when relatively new. Bill writes:

Pump cars are specially outfitted cars that are sent into flooded tunnels to pump  water out.   What makes 5001 unique is that it is equipped with a master controller and ME23 brake valve on each end and  was set up to operate with BMT subway cars of the day.   Later on it was modified to operate with R9 cars.  No other pump car had this feature.

The way the pump train would work is, with power on as far as you could get into a flooded area, the pump car would lead into the flood, going in as far it could go.  The siphon would be dropped down, hoses rigged to go the nearest sewer line (since the sewers are above the subway level)  or simply to the street and water pumped out.    When enough water was pumped out, break it down, move and repeat as needed.

The pump car was  attached usually to 3 reach cars, which were old wooden Q type cars, which were loaded with hoses and other gear, as well as providing some seating for work crews.    There was a bus line, located in the  roof area of the pump cars and the reach cars, that would go all the way through the cars.  The times I was on it, the bus line plug on the rear car would be jumped into one of the electrical panels in the car of the R9 pushing it..   On site, this was disconnected and a heavy duty connector put to a 3rd rail, as everything on the car was 600 volts DC

Control from the  pump car back was an interesting conglomeration.    The pump car had electric portions on the H2 couplers it was built with.  The lead reach car had an H2 coupler on the end coupled to the pump car but the other end had  a Van Dorn, as did the middle car and the “blind” end of the 3rd reach car, which in turn had an H2 coupler with an electric portion to couple to the subway cars.    In areas where the Van Dorns were, there were MU jumper cables.   

Now what really made this train odd was while the pump car was equipped with ME23 brake valves and had the electric brake plug feature, it and the reach cars were all straight air. The electric feature only worked on the subway cars attached to it.  When I operated it, I usually did not bother with the electric brake feature as it was not dependable at the time. Straight air was a bit slower but more reliable when you needed it.

So that's pretty interesting! The only recent photo I could find online of car 5001 is here but it is indeed stored at Coney Island with several other non-revenue cars in the historic collection.

Many thanks to Bill for sending me information on this car so that it can be added to the list. Unpowered equipment like this can be a grey area, and in general I tend not to add unpowered non-revenue equipment unless its design is unique to traction practice (like an interurban freight trailer). But car 5001 is a control trailer, set up with a controller and brake stand, and undoubtedly qualifies.

Adding details

I've mentioned this plenty of times before, but I'm always looking to fill in gaps on the PNAERC roster wherever possible. There are a lot of cars on the list for which I'm missing technical information - trucks, motors, control, brakes, air compressors. Some of these are car bodies, and in certain cases that information just doesn't exist. But in many cases, it's simply that this information hasn't been published online.

I'm always appreciative of people taking the time to look up information like this and sending it to me. To that end, many thanks to Bill Wall of Branford and Joel Salomon of Rockhill for filling in a few gaps recently. Bill sent me a cache of information on NYCTA 44 (pictured above in a Dave Pirrmann photo), a unique piece of equipment with virtually no published information available online. By design, it's a box motor, but it was built for service on the New York subway system and has long been used as a subway maintenance work car. It's been in the NYCTA's historic fleet since 1988. The PNAERC list now includes this car's trucks, motors, control, dimensions, and Bill also pointed out that it was built for the BMT and not - as previously and erroneously listed - for the IND.

UPDATE: And Bill has also sent information on NYCTA 5000, another New York subway system work car that resembles a box motor. This one started out as a locomotive and was converted to a welding/tool car right at the end of its service life. In addition to mechanical and dimensional information, Bill also pointed out that it was built not for South Brooklyn Railway but rather for New York Municipal Railway, a subsidiary of Brooklyn Rapid Transit that was folded into BMT in 1923. The car is pictured above in a photo Bill took a few weeks ago when he and a few others boarded it up, in the process evicting the pigeons that had taken up residence inside 5000. Bill comments about the pigeon eviction, "There were over one hundred living inside it and were not happy at all about it. In some ways, it was like the Hitchcock movie 'The Birds'."

Meanwhile Joel sent me some information on a couple of pieces of ex-Philadelphia & Western non-revenue equipment at the Rockhill Trolley Museum, snow plow 10 and freight motor 402. Both complete and operational, car 10 is a 1916 Wason double-truck plow retired in 1988 while car 402 was built in 1920 in the shops of the Detroit United system and is one of only two surviving ex-DUR cars. Previously missing information like motors, brakes, and air compressors have now been added to these cars' listings.

You too can help! If you notice that your local museum includes cars with missing information, jot it down and send it in. Thank you!

Better late than never

As I mentioned in my last post, it can sometimes take me a while before a change is reflected on the PNAERC roster. And so it goes with Arkansas Valley Interurban 12.

I came across a KAKE article, which included the photo above, about this combine-turned-box-motor-turned-chicken coop. The article dates to 2017 and indicates that AVI 12, which I knew had been deaccessed by the Great Plains Transportation Museum back in 2013, had been transferred to the expansively named Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita & Sedgwick County. Sure enough, recent photos suggest that it's gone from the GPTM site in downtown Wichita, so my best guess is that it's stored with HPAWSC's other two car bodies in a warehouse southwest of the city.

AVI 12 is a fairly historic piece. One of only two surviving cars from Kansas' most famous interurban line (the other is in private ownership and virtually nothing is known about its condition), car 12 was built by American in 1917 as a fairly attractive combine. In 1938 it had large baggage doors cut into its sides and was rebuilt into a freight motor; just two years later, when the wires came down, it became a freight trailer. It only lasted another two years in that role before its body ended up on a farm in Bentley, KS. The car was acquired by GPTM in 1988 but just sat by the fence at the north end of the museum's site until the decision was made to get rid of it. It's taken me a while to figure out where it went, as GPTM doesn't seem to have publicized the sale/donation and HPAWSC has a minimal online presence, but the PNAERC list has finally been updated. If anyone figures out exactly when the car was moved, let me know.

Montreal 274 update

It's not unusual for me to find out about a change to a preserved car - a restoration project, a sale, maybe a scrapping - a few years after it happened. Some museums don't have as robust an online presence as others and there are a number of trolley museums where I simply don't happen to be in regular contact with anyone who volunteers there. Such is the case with the restoration of Montreal Street Railway 274.

Looking for something largely unrelated, I happened upon this photo taken in 2018 of car 274. The car in question was the first piece of equipment acquired by the Canadian Railway Museum, back in 1950, so it's historic for that alone. But it's also a very old car, dating to 1894, and it was built by Newburyport, a builder with only two preserved products. I had been told about a decade ago by Gord McOuat that car 274 was being cosmetically restored by CRM but I hadn't heard anything about it since and managed to miss any announcements the museum might have put out about completion of the project. As a comparison, this is what it looked like prior to cosmetic restoration:

Photo from this site. So that's quite an impressive transformation. The car's condition, formerly listed as "under restoration," has now been updated to "displayed inoperable."

If you come across a car on the list whose information is out-of-date, please drop me an email. I'm always interested in keeping listings as current as possible. Thanks!

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.