Trip Report - Branford Electric Railway

On the Sunday of the "IRM Comes to Connecticut" trip, we had to fly home in the afternoon but we had the morning to goof off. Hence, a trip to Branford! Branford, a.k.a. the Shore Line Trolley Museum, is one of the three big New England trolley museums and is the closest trolley museum to New York City. They have an outstanding collection of historic equipment from the northeast, including a lot of really unique pieces and an impressive number of fully-restored cars. Above, Branford's most recently completed major restoration is New Orleans 850, shown here in front of Sprague Station (more on Sprague below). Below, the four of us are shown in front of 850: L-R Frank Hicks, Norm Krentel, Randy Hicks and Jeff Brady. Sprague was built in the 1950's at the end of a street near downtown East Haven, CT and named for electric railway pioneer Frank Julian Sprague. The museum's streetcar tracks start in front of Sprague in the street, and extend past where the street ends towards the main museum site and beyond it through a very scenic tidal marsh to the end of the line at Short Beach, a mile or so off.

Inside Sprague is a gift shop, washroom, member's office and a small but extremely well designed museum area. Included in the museum is a small movie theater and some really neat displays, including one shown at left where rotating the handle of a K-controller lights up different panels on the wall showing the change in the motor circuit. There's also a neat display showing how trolley poles, wheels and overhead wire work, and some displays of historical photos. Jeff Hakner met us at Sprague and took us for a tour of the museum.


After a nice ride on the line (no photos, I just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery), we were deposited at the well-maintained museum site shown at right. The museum is situated on the edge of a tidal marsh and has virtually no space to expand - the opposite situation IRM is in, fortunately for us. Most of their collection is under cover in the barns shown. The car in the middle is a New York subway car similar in general design to IRM's Broad Street subway car. It is on a shop truck while motor work is done.

Branford's line is on the right-of-way of an old Connecticut Co. line and they have an outstanding collection of ConnCo equipment. At left is the interior of ConnCo parlor car 500, built by Brill in 1904. It's a beautiful car and is restored and operational.




Branford has a tremendous collection of New York-area equipment of all descriptions including various streetcars, elevated and subway cars, and work equipment. In the latter category is this open-cab derrick from the South Brooklyn Railway which was recently restored. Most of Branford's equipment is stored in barns with tight aisles but they have a couple of display barns which are nicely set up for public viewing. Like most non-railway museums, most of their collection is in storage and visitors mainly see the highlights.

You may be asking yourself, "what is this... and why do I care?" Well, it's a GE C-18C controller off of a 1907 subway car owned by Branford, IRT #3662. The reason it's interesting is that this design is nearly identical to the C-21 controllers that the 321 has - except that while the CA&E removed the automatic acceleration feature from their C-21's, the IRT kept that feature in their C-18's. I took some video of this thing in operation too, however I'm having problems uploading videos to YouTube at the moment so that will have to wait.


We then got to visit the Branford shop, where shop manager Ted Eikmann was working on their current big project, Atlanta streetcar 948 (below left). Since the water table at the museum is very high due to their location adjacent to the marsh, they have an above-ground pit where the pit track enters their shop elevated on a fill and is supported on wooden posts. Below right is one of the trucks under the 948, both of which were completely rebuilt by the museum.









We then got a special tour through a couple of Branford's more historic, albeit unrestored, rapid transit cars. First was the "Mineola," the only preserved (maybe the only ever built) subway private car, constructed in 1904 for August Belmont. Branford got its body from the Magee Museum in Pennsylvania in the 1970's; below Randy Hicks takes a picture of one of the compartments. I'm not sure whether the desk is original to the car.
After this came Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) instruction car 824. This car was built in 1881 (!) as a steam-hauled elevated car and was rebuilt as an instruction car in 1902 when the Manhattan Elevated was electrified. Again, why should you care? Because the Manhattan Elevated electrification was the impetus for the creation of the first successful GE Type M multiple-unit system: a pair of C-6 controllers operating a pair of GE-66 125hp traction motors using DB-15 contactors and a DB-20 reverser. This was the system used by the CA&E for its original fleet because at the time the CA&E was built, in 1902, this was the most modern system of motors and control available that could provide the power and speed the CA&E needed. The difference was that the CA&E cars needed four motors per car, but since the Manhattan Elevated only needed two motors per car that's what the DB-15 contactor had been designed for. The solution? Two complete sets of contactors, reversers and resistance grids under each CA&E car. And that's what the 309 has to this day. There will be a test at the end of the semester.
Instruction car 824 is full of neat displays, interactive and not, that were used to teach men used to steam engines how electric cars worked. Above we see that the car's contactors, rather than being mounted under the car, are actually inside the car so that their operation can be observed.

Below left, here's a neat thing: a big steel bench with two Van Dorn coupler heads (same as used on the CA&E) mounted facing each other, with the one on the right attached to an air cylinder that could be used to couple and uncouple them. And at below right, you can see a sample coupling complete with air hoses and control jumpers. The significant thing about this is that while the rear control jumper sockets have normal hinged covers, the front sockets have semi-spherical clamshell-style covers. These were used on the original CA&E cars (later replaced with hinged covers) but this is the only example of the clamshell covers I have ever seen in person. The one on the left is open, the one on the right closed.









And so our trip to Branford came to an all-too-early close as we had to get back to the airport and fly back to Illinois. Many thanks to Jeff Hakner for showing us around! Branford is a great museum with an incredibly historic collection, arguably the most scenic ride of any trolley museum anywhere, and some great restoration and museum facilities. It's a must-see if you're ever in New York or Connecticut!