News and Updates to the Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars (PNAERC) List
The news made it out on Facebook today that Red Arrow "Bullet" car 206 has just been cosmetically restored by the Electric City Trolley Museum. Its newly applied livery, shown here, reflects its 1960s-era appearance in the years before Red Arrow was incorporated into SEPTA. The car serves as the "gate guardian" outside the ECTM museum building in Scranton. Kudos to the crew at ECTM for a very nice…
A huge thank you goes out to contributor Daniel, who emailed to notify me of this Facebook post from about a year ago. The unusual thing about the car in the photo is that I took it off the PNAERC list two years ago because I assumed it had been scrapped. Whoops! This is Toronto Transportation Commission 4524 , a class A-8 PCC car built by St. Louis in 1951. It was withdrawn from service on May…
This one came as a surprise: Matthew Juergens emailed me to let me know that Third Avenue Railway System 637, shown below in an undated photo, was scrapped sometime around last September. The car was owned by the Tramway Museum Graz, which is located at the end of the streetcar line in Mariatrost, on the outskirts of Graz, Austria. Car 637 was built in 1939 by TARS but only ran in New York for…
Thanks to Bill Wall, who passes along word that SEPTA 2104, the last Philadelphia PCC remaining at the Middletown & Hummelstown, was shipped to the scrapyard yesterday. Car 2104 was a standard Philly postwar car built in 1948, overhauled in the 1980s GOH program, and sold to the M&H in 1994. Its loss is unfortunate, but not particularly significant; by my count, there are roughly 70 Philadelphia…
Thanks to Sean Bowen and Jordan Helzer, who sent me this link to a Facebook post from the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in May. Ottawa 696 , the oldest double-truck car from that city in preservation, has been moved to a new location. It has moved from its longtime home in an OC Transpo bus garage to the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smiths Falls, which is an organization new to PNAERC.…
The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has rolled out their second striking, one-off PCC livery in as many years, this time in honor of the semiquincentennial. As shown above, Port Authority Transit 1799 , a 1945 air-electric car, has been painted in a livery seen on the streets of Pittsburgh around the bicentennial in 1976. It's a striking color scheme that built off the then-current "banded" color…
Thanks to Steve Baron for alerting me to a Facebook post from yesterday that brought to light a car I wasn't aware existed. Austin Street Railway 63 is the last surviving (as far as I know!) car from that city's system. It's always fun to find a previously unknown survivor. This car is a Birney, obviously enough. According to Harold Cox's book on Birneys, Austin 63-65 were acquired secondhand from…
The first - though, I'm predicting, not the last - car on the PNAERC list to be repainted especially for the semiquincentennial, Washington Metro (WMATA) 1000 has shown up on the National Mall for display over the next couple of weeks according to this Facebook post . The car has been cosmetically restored to its as-built condition, at least from the looks of the photos, and really does look quite…
Unusually enough, there's news today from a few different directions, and on a few different topics. First off, thanks to Bill Wall for passing along the news that Seashore has again updated their "re-homing list." Most of the cars on it are the same as the last edition , but there are three new additions that the museum has decided to deaccession. The first, pictured above in a photo taken way…
In a post today on the Ahead of the Torch Facebook group, it was confirmed that Seashore has scrapped South Shore interurban car 32. This is no great loss; of the 40 coaches operated by the CSS&SB between the 1920s and the early 1980s, no fewer than 27 - a full two-thirds - are still in existence, including "flanking" cars 30 , 31 , 33 , and 34 . This particular car was in particularly bad…
I owe a big thank you to our official researcher, Wesley Paulson, who just returned from a visit to the Halton County Radial Railway in Canada and sent several updates and photos to help fill out and update the PNAERC list. Wesley was able to nab some photos of cars at HCRY that are pictured on the PNAERC roster, but whose images are either poor or outdated. Above is TTC C1 , a 1911 derrick, which…
News comes from Facebook today that Long Island Rail Road 4137, shown above in 2016, has been scrapped at the Seashore Trolley Museum. A lot of equipment was salvaged from the car to benefit cars at other museums, including seats and electrical parts that will go to New Haven "Washboard" MU combines preserved in Danbury. Photo posted 5/28/2026 on Ahead of the Torch Car 4137 was an MP-54A1…
We'll forgive you if you're getting a bit of 'L' car fatigue, but I've been notified that another pair of Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit cars has been preserved. This time it's CTA 2401 and 2402 , the first pair of 2400-series cars built by Boeing-Vertol in 1976. They're shown above in an October 1976 photo from here . Unfortunately, I can't find any recent photos of them, nor is there…
A pair of new - and in this case, "new" means "42-year-old" - rapid transit cars arrived at the Illinois Railway Museum on Friday, fresh from the Chicago Transit Authority. CTA cars 2871 and 2872 , a married-pair set, are 2600-series cars built in 1984 by Budd. This was one of the last orders for railway cars built by Budd, and in fact the last cars of this order were also the last rapid transit…
A post today on Facebook revealed that SEPTA 476 and 477 , the pair of ex-Chicago Transit Authority 6000-series 'L' cars at the Middletown & Hummelstown, have left the M&H and are headed to the Fox River Trolley Museum. CTA 6000s are not exactly an endangered species. Besides this set, another seven married pairs (plus half of another pair ) are known to exist, and that's not counting another five…
Thanks to Bill Wall and Wesley Paulson for sending me updates of recent news on the last surviving piece of equipment from the Trenton & Mercer County, New Jersey Transit 5246 , a snow sweeper built by Russell in 1921. Today, the sweeper was moved from its recent storage location at the Bloomfield NJT light rail shops to Titusville, NJ (above photo by Bill Wall). There, its new owner, Liberty…
The latest Seashore Trolley Museum "re-homing list" update has dropped, and it adds a handful of cars to the various pieces still hanging out on the list from previous editions of the list. The most significant addition to the list is Harrisburg Railways 811 , shown above in a 2016 photo. One of two Harrisburg streetcars in existence, this double-truck, arch-roof semi-convertible was built by…
Thanks to Wesley Paulson for pointing me to a Facebook post that contained some unexpected news about Georgia Railway & Power 269 : the car has left the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, its home for some 24 years. Car 269 was built by Cincinnati in 1921 and was used on the line to Duluth, making it the only one of the handful of surviving Atlanta streetcars able to make that claim. As the…
The Trolley Museum of New York announced today on their Facebook page that SEPTA 618 , one of two preserved "Almond Joy" cars from the Market-Frankford Elevated in Philadelphia, has arrived at the TMNY site in Kingston. The car has been listed under TMNY ownership since May 2025, which is when it departed its former home at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine, but it had been kept at an…
I found out this past weekend from a Liberty Historic Railway volunteer that Five Mile Beach Electric 20, a double-truck open car body that had been stored for many years in a warehouse in Wildwood, New Jersey, is no more. I knew the car had been acquired in 2019 by LHR and had been shipped to Gomaco in Iowa for evaluation, but hadn't heard anything more. As it turns out, the car's condition was…
Someone I know recently visited the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris, and I persuaded them to take photos of some of the bodies stored at the museum there. There are a few cars on the PNAERC list with no photos, including several at SCRM, and I'm hoping that our readers can help me identify some of the cars that are kept there in storage. I'm grateful for any information on the below…
There are a couple of PCC-related updates from the Fox River Trolley Museum in Illinois. The first is that San Francisco Municipal Railway 1030, the 1951 PCC shown in the above photo taken on Saturday, has been scrapped along with a diesel. This car has been stored out of service for decades and was offered to other organizations more than a year ago . Given its condition, there were no takers.…
Many thanks to Jacob Wiczkowski, who emailed me to point out that a new car was added last year to the collection of the Museo de Transportes Electricos, or Museum of Electric Transportation, in Mexico City. SDTE car 018 is a light rail vehicle, the first to be preserved in Mexico as far as I know. It was built for the Xochimilco light rail line, which was built in the mid-1980s as an upgrade of…
Today, I've got a new car on the list and another piece of equipment taken off. First, the good news: Northeast Rail Heritage Inc., the enigmatic owner of an Amtrak AEM7 as described here , now has a second piece of equipment on the list. SEPTA 238 , pictured above, is the last Silverliner III MU car built in 1967 for the Pennsylvania Railroad. This car was retired in 2012 but remained on SEPTA…
Ending 2025 on a positive note, the Danbury Railway Museum last week received a quartet of new cars for its growing collection of mainline electric equipment. Metro-North M3A-type cars 8002 , 8003 , 8106 , and 8107 were brought onto the museum grounds in a late-night move. Thanks to Jordan Helzer for alerting me to this Facebook post , and to DRM and Marc Glucksman/River Rail Photo for the above…