Trip Report - Pennsylvania Trolley Museum

Work took me to Pittsburgh this past weekend, and fortunately I had time to make it over to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in nearby Washington, PA on Saturday night. Bruce Wells, one of PTM's longtime volunteers and fellow trolley museum blogger (his blog at weaklyreports.net is highly recommended!), braved the cold and snow to meet me at the museum and show me some of the progress that has been made.
The highlight had to be West Penn 832, seen above in the PTM shop building. This is the latest of the museum's signature frame-up restoration projects that have been made possible by a unique combination of successful grant applications, extensive fundraising, and well-managed coordination between volunteers and contracted firms. WP 832 is the only Cincinnati curve-side car that was preserved complete. It recently returned from Brookville Equipment in Pennsylvania, which did major body work, replaced the car's roof, rebuilt the trucks and largely rewired the car.
The photo above shows the car's interior as it exists now. PTM's volunteer crew has been making steady progress on repairing or replacing interior appointments and fixtures, and once these are ready for installation the car's interior will be reassembled.
Another highlight of the trip was seeing the cars that PTM acquired from Trolleyville in Ohio. I hadn't visited the museum since the Trolleyville collection was auctioned off, so for me this was the first time I had seen these cars since they were in North Olmsted. Above is Cincinnati Street Railway 2227, the only complete streetcar from that city in existence. The story of its trucks, as related to me by Bruce, would make for a lengthy blog post in itself; suffice to say that PTM is having the car's trucks and motors rebuilt for operation on their wide-gauge line and that the car will likely be running within the next year or two.
Another car acquired from Trolleyville was Jones high-floor car 4145, shown above. PTM owns an example of this type that was rebuilt for work service but car 4145 was restored in the 1970's to its passenger-carrying days. Since arrival PTM has rebuilt its trucks and made this car operational.
The third ex-Trolleyville car at PTM is the "Toledo," a remarkable and unique example of a Midwestern street railway private car. Though the body was restored at Trolleyville, it is just on shop trucks at the moment; PTM is looking into options for replacing the car's original motors and GE Type M control.

And then there were a couple of cars that weren't from Trolleyville that piqued my interest. At left is ex-Rio de Janeiro open car 1758, acquired by PTM a few years ago and recently made operational following extensive work to re-gauge it to conform to the museum's 5'2-1/2" gauge track. Except for the ends, which were rebuilt around 1970 by a different museum, this car is basically identical to Rio 1889 which was acquired by IRM in 2010.



And then there's West Penn 739, a center-door car of the classic type usually associated with that unusual interurban system. These cars operated on one of the hilliest interurban lines in the country without air brakes: all braking was done with electro-magnetic track brakes and with hand brakes. WP 739 is a body and is missing quite a few parts, but Bruce and his family have recently performed a cosmetic restoration not too dissimilar to what we're currently doing on Indiana Railroad 205.


I'm hoping to make it back to PTM sometime in the next couple of years during warmer weather so that I can ride on some of this equipment. The museum is highly recommended for anyone who might find themselves in the Pittsburgh area!