Visit to Arden

Frank writes...

Family and work obligations have kept me away from Union for the last couple of months, but my job still has me traveling and this past weekend it had me in Pittsburgh. Of course that meant a visit to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, where I met up with Bruce Wells.

When I first arrived, a volunteer I hadn't met before named Bob Jordan had just shut down the museum's Westinghouse "visibility cab" diesel, ARMCO B73. This wouldn't normally be terribly interesting except that B73 is one of the oldest operating diesels in the country, if not the oldest, and it's identical to recently-acquired B71 at IRM. The volunteers at PTM keep it in good shape and run it regularly, though they don't run it far because it's standard gauge and most of the museum's trackage is 5'2.5" gauge.

Bruce, pictured above, showed me around the PTM shop. Their fully-restored Pittsburgh car, 4398, was getting some paint touch-up and a couple of other cars were in the shop for what I believe were just inspection tasks. The current "big" project is shown above: Philadelphia Peter Witt 8042, a standard car from that city that PTM got just a few years ago. It's complete but somewhat deteriorated. The museum hired a contractor to completely rebuild the front end of the car and that work is mostly complete.

Here's the left side of the front platform, where museum volunteers are replacing the various switches and electrical boxes.

And here's the interior of car 8042, which is in pretty good condition. It's easy to imagine this car being in service on PTM's line in a few years once its body work is complete and a few other tasks - new roof canvas, new upper-sash windows - are done.

Later on Bruce and another museum volunteer, Chris Walker, showed me through the museum's archives. It was very interesting and, unlike IRM's libraries, entirely traction-oriented. They have a small collection of builder's photos from Brill subsidiaries and I had the opportunity to snap pictures with my phone of a few. I've uploaded photos of the Galesburg Birneys, of which IRM's Illinois Terminal 170 was one, to that car's history page here. And watch this page for some more interesting finds!