Trip Report - Back to Branford

 Frank writes...

Work had me in Connecticut last week, and I was able to take a few hours on a Thursday afternoon to stop at the Branford Electric Railway (aka Shore Line Trolley Museum) in East Haven, CT.  The last time I was there was two years ago, when a few IRM members traveled to Connecticut to swap trucks between CA&E 36 and CA&E 303, which is located up the Connecticut River a ways at Warehouse Point.  Branford has had an eventful couple of years, most notably suffering severe storm damage from Hurricane Irene in August of last year.  The museum sits on low ground near the ocean, and the storm surge flooded the entire property, rendering every piece in the collection inoperable save three streetcars that had been moved to higher ground.  Undaunted, though, the museum's volunteers have been working on getting the collection running again.

When I arrived at Sprague Station, two of the three cars that "got away" from the hurricane - New Orleans 850 and Johnstown 357 - were sitting in front of the station.  In all, 12 pieces of equipment have been returned to operation, giving the museum 15 operating cars at this time.  Inside the Sprague building, which wasn't flooded, is a very nice museum area with multiple interesting displays.  One on current collection is shown at above right.

Over at the museum property there were signs of progress being made even on a quiet Thursday afternoon.  Above left, one of Branford's members has built a shelter over an unusual electric box cab locomotive and was doing steel work on the locomotive.  Above right, a trolley bus from Philadelphia peeks out of one of the car barns.  Branford is working on becoming the third museum in the country to have an operating trolley bus line and it looked like most of the overhead hardware was already in place, just waiting for wire to be strung.

Jeff Hakner, who helped us with the motor swap two years ago, was able to meet up with me and show me around the shop.  There were a few cars in for repairs including a Montreal lightweight car that was having its motors dried out after being flooded during the hurricane.  Jeff designed two hot air blowers (seen above) to accomplish this; an industrial fan blows air past electric heating coils located in the section of tubing and into the motor casing while a heat-activated limit switch turns the whole thing off if the fan fails and it gets too hot.  Two of these have been built and it takes two weeks to dry out a motor, meaning one car per month can be done.  While motors dried out in this fashion are not "as good as new," this does seem to work to make the cars operational.  If you're interested in donating to help Branford's recovery click here.