Charlotte 85 moved to Belmont

I'm a bit late on this one, but I came across a Facebook post from the Belmont Trolley group and noticed that a familiar-looking streetcar could be seen in the background. Sure enough, back on January 3rd of this year, Southern Public Utilities 85, the only preserved streetcar from Charlotte, NC, was moved to a new home in Belmont, NC. The photo above is from the Belmont Trolley Facebook page.

Charlotte 85 was built in 1927 and ran until retirement in 1938, at which point its body was sold. In 1993 the car body was retrieved by the Charlotte Trolley group, restored using trucks and electrical parts salvaged from Melbourne streetcars, and put into service (using a towed generator) on a short stretch of track in Charlotte. The right-of-way was later subsumed into the Charlotte light rail line, and for a brief period car 85 shared the light rail tracks, but at some point it was taken out of service and put into storage. In March 2016 it was sent to the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer.

In Belmont, it's currently stored in the city's public works building (along with two foreign single-truckers, an Oporto car and a Greek car that is itself another refugee from Charlotte Trolley). The plans are to rebuild it with some sort of battery-powered system so that it can run on a short tourist line on the north side of town. Car 85 has had its ownership updated and I've added Belmont Trolley to the PNAERC database, as this is their first domestic electric car acquisition.

For its part, NCTM in Spencer is still home to two electrics on the list - the P&N boxcab locomotive and a New Orleans streetcar in storage - as well as this thing, which is not currently on the list due to a lack of information on it.

Two cars deaccessed by Seashore

As of this past weekend, the Seashore Trolley Museum has deaccessed two of the cars in its collection and is making them available to other organizations.

The first, shown above in 2015 (both photos in this post from this page), is South Shore 32. It's a typical coach from that railroad, built by Standard Steel in 1929, and given how many identical cars are preserved elsewhere, it's not particularly significant. It's in rough shape, and all of its underbody electrical equipment was removed when it was moved to Seashore in the 1980s, but it's complete insofar as all of the equipment is on hand.

The other car is somewhat rarer: Long Island Rail Road 4137, an MP54A1 commuter MU car built by AC&F in 1930. This car is complete, though I don't think it has run at Seashore and it too is in rough shape (though I believe its steel roof has held up better than the canvas one on car 32). There aren't too many LIRR electric cars preserved: only five right now, of which one other besides this car has also been deaccessed by its owner.

It makes a lot of sense for Seashore to deaccess these cars. Neither has ever run in Kennebunkport, as far as I know, and given their huge size neither is a good candidate for normal operation at Seashore in the future. With luck, one or both cars may even find a new home elsewhere.

The Trolley Car Diner Resurfaces

One of the better-known streetcar diners, and one of only a handful included on the PNAERC list, has reappeared after about two years on the lam. Philadelphia 2134, the PCC car shown above, was for many years known as the Trolley Car Diner, an ice cream stand located on Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy. But the diner closed in October 2019, and on April 10, 2020, the car was loaded onto a truck and carted off to parts unknown.

It's now reappeared, still in its hometown, now located in the East Kensington section of north Philadelphia. The photo above, posted to Facebook (no login required), shows the car on display in what is evidently a small "wine garden" that is currently being built (conveniently enough, Google Street View passed this location in May 2022 and the car hadn't arrived yet, so we can confidently nail down its arrival date to sometime in the last 60 days or so).

So the car's owner has been updated to the Mural City Wine Garden. I listed its owner from 2020 to 2022 as "private owner," since it seems to have been sold back in 2019-2020 by the now-defunct Mount Airy diner but its current home didn't exist yet. It appears to still be on its trucks, though of course hollowed out inside. We'll see how it fares in its new location.

Toronto PCC to return home

TTC 4601 in 2000

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson for sending me this post on Facebook (no login required) courtesy of the Michigan Transit Museum. For about 11 years now, MTM has stored the two PCC cars in its possession - Detroit 268, acquired via a stint in Mexico City, and Toronto 4601 - on private property near Port Huron, Michigan. The Toronto car, which has no local significance and was never regauged from Toronto wide gauge, was deaccessed back in 2015 and it seems the car has finally found a taker. Halton County, which is already home to three 4600-series rebuilt PCC cars, is planning on moving car 4601 back north of the border sometime soon. The MTM announcement states that the intention is to restore the car. This is the latest example of an organization taking the positive step of deaccessing an unneeded piece of equipment that is using resources better applied elsewhere.

The TTC 4600s are an interesting subspecies of PCC. They were heavily overhauled by the TTC between 1986 and 1992, using class A-8 cars built by St. Louis for TTC in 1951 as the starting points. They were largely rebuilt in-kind, at least mechanically, and were painted in traditional colors for use on the Harbourfront Line. As such, when they were retired only a few years later in 1996, they were in excellent condition body-wise and were viewed as prime candidates for preservation. All 19 of the cars rebuilt for the 4600 program survive today, including two kept by TTC as heritage cars and six in regular heritage line service in Kenosha, WI. The remaining 11 cars ended up at museums: three at Halton County, one at MTM (soon to go to Halton County), two each at McKinney Avenue and National Capital, two at non-operating museums in Arizona, and one in Edmonton.

New York subway car being auctioned off

Now is your chance to have your very own New York subway car. NYCTA 9075, an R33-ML type car built in 1963, is being auctioned off by the Borough of Queens according to this article (and a few others). The article says that this is the last car of its kind, but that's manifestly not true, as there are at least ten other R33 cars in preservation and likely more knocking around the subway system. Car 9075's record has been updated to reflect that it's for sale, and with luck I'll find out who buys it and where it ends up going, even if it's into a scrap dumpster.

Some real money was put into plinthing this car back in 2005, including a substantial concrete pad, but it was probably inevitable that its owners would tire of maintaining it. I was surprised to see, in one of the photos, that at least part of the car's interior looks completely original (well, end-of-service original). I had thought it was being used as some sort of visitor's center, but perhaps it was just an exhibit piece. But electric cars put to uses like this usually have a finite shelf life (example). I'm surprised the relatively nearby MPB-54 chamber of commerce is still in use.

As an aside, if you're wondering why these cars are on the PNAERC list when cars on the ground (i.e. diners, private homes, and other "chicken coops") aren't, the reason is trucks. If a car is complete enough to retain its trucks and underbody, then I'll typically consider it sufficiently intact to be considered "preserved" even if it's in non-railroad use.

Oklahoma interurban car burned

Thanks to Andy Nold for confirming that Pittsburg County Railway 32 has, indeed, been destroyed by fire. The photo above was sent courtesy of John Myers. As such, the car has now been removed from the PNAERC list. It's too bad, as it was an attractive little interurban coach built by Niles in 1907. Its condition had been steadily deteriorating, though, and some years back the Southwest Missouri car next to it had rotted to the point of collapsing entirely. With PCR 32 now gone, there are only three electric cars on the PNAERC list in the state of Oklahoma: a Texas Electric freight trailer and two Birneys, one in Muskogee and one in Tulsa.

Another car headed to East Troy

East Troy is on an acquisition spree, as noted in this post from their Facebook page over the weekend (no log-in required). The next car on their list, due to arrive sometime later this month, is Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee 162 (its owner will be updated once the car is physically moved). Following the recent dismantling of car 154, this is now one of two surviving cars from the North Shore's original order for steel cars, the other being car 160 at IRM. Car 162 was built by Brill in 1915 and retired from service when the North Shore quit in 1963. At that time it went to Niskayuna, New York, to be a part of the planned American Museum of Electricity. Unfortunately this project never got off the ground, and car 162 (and 710, which was scrapped last year) went to the Connecticut Trolley Museum in 1971.

It has sat there ever since, never operating (I believe it may have been stripped of some metal while in Niskayuna), but with a tarpaper roof that protected it somewhat better than car 710. Its condition is very rough, no doubt, but largely complete. Once restored, it would be the second North Shore interurban car at East Troy.

This also means that of the six electrics deaccessed by CTM in 2018 (article here), only two are really still in limbo: the mainline electrics, LIRR 4153 and CN 6714. Car 162 has now been sold, one CTA 'L' car and one North Shore car have been scrapped, and the other CTA car - CTA 4175 - is, according to photos taken a few weeks ago, still in partially-scrapped "can-opener victim" condition from last fall. But its ultimate fate can hardly be in doubt. Anyone interested in an MP54?

ON AN UNRELATED TOPIC... a comment was posted that Pittsburg County Railway 32, a wood interurban car body on display in McAlester, Oklahoma, has been destroyed by fire. Can anyone confirm or offer more details?