Friday, May 17, 2013

The Last Car From Cleveland

(Photo by Jim Vaitkunas)

When the Trolleyville collection was being distributed amongst various electric railway museums back in 2009, one car was held back for eventual display.  This is Cleveland Railway #1218, a distinctive center entrance design built by Kuhlman in 1914.  It ran as a streetcar in Cleveland until 1921, then operated on the Shaker Heights suburban lines until 1961, when it was acquired by Gerald Brookins.  And now that plans to put it on display in Cleveland have fallen through, the car has been acquired by IRM and should be arriving shortly.

The car is complete and is thought to be in very good condition, so it should make a welcome addition to our operating fleet.  Nick Kallas, of course, has been largely responsible for the negotiations needed to bring this car to Union.  Arrangements have already been made for shipping.  When it arrives, we'll post pictures of it here.

9 comments:

  1. Will this gem be stored outside until barn space is arranged? Or is there space available?

    David Church

    ReplyDelete
  2. Randall,
    That arrival of the Cleveland car at IRM is great news; since the Northern Ohio Railway Museum already has one; it is good for this one to have a place to run.

    This is the car's Shaker Heights form and the one at Seashore in Maine is in the Cleveland Railways configuration, so it has different trucks, hardware and color scheme.

    Ted Miles
    IRM Member

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations. Hope you have a barn space for it. The rumor I herd several weeks ago was correct.

    Artschwartz

    ReplyDelete
  4. What paint scheme is the car in? Is it in a Cleveland Interurban Railway scheme? Shaker Heights Rapid Transit?

    ReplyDelete
  5. David, we have seen the ex Fox River cars in these same colors so I suspect it's Shaker.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Looking for a color photo of a Cleveland Peter Witt car from the early 1950s, so a custom paint job can be applied to a G-scale Peter Witt car. Any help is appreciated. dosbo66736@aol.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. The only one I could find is from Don Ross:

    http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0903/shrt17.jpg

    Hope that helps. I'm not a modeler, but I'm sure you're aware that an early color photo scanned into a jpg and then viewed on a monitor can give you only a very rough idea of the correct color to use. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I would recommend a neat site you may have heard of called Hicks Car Works:

    http://hickscarworks.blogspot.com/2013/10/h1218.html

    The early 1950s was a period of transition from the older grey/cream/red livery to the new light grey/yellow livery, but there's at least one color photo of each at the above link.

    ReplyDelete

Please identify yourself with a name of some sort in your comment. Completely anonymous comments will be deleted. Thanks!