I happened upon something that I found earlier this year that I thought was of slight historical interest. At the time I was going through some of the spare parts we acquired back in 2010 from Trolleyville and came across the above letter, albeit in fragmentary form. It was sent by John someone from the Arden Trolley Museum (today the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum) to Ed Blossom, who headed up restoration work at the Magee Trolley Museum. Dated July 27, 1967, it appears to outline several Pittsburgh streetcars converted for work service that were still on the Port Authority roster and might be available.
It was around this time, or I think a bit later, that Magee purchased high-floor car M459 and undertook a major restoration project to restore it to as-built condition as Pittsburgh Railways 4145. That car isn't among the ones listed on this letter, though, so it may have been inadvertently left off or it may have already been purchased by Magee (or allocated to some other group that later backed out). The cars listed include M454, which was bought by Arden and later scrapped for parts; M451, apparently bought by Arden as a parts source shortly before this letter; M200, which went to Arden in 1972 and is today preserved there in work car configuration; and M452, which I have no information on. It's not still around so it was probably cut up in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Anyway, this piece of paper had a pretty strange journey. It looks like it was just thrown into a pile with a bunch of spare parts when the Magee museum collection was dispersed in 1973 after that museum was badly damaged in Hurricane Agnes. This pile of parts accompanied car M459/4145 to Trolleyville, and this paper was again in with a bunch of parts when that museum's collection was dispersed in 2009. This time it made its way yet further west to Illinois. And here it is.
Frank,
ReplyDeleteBased on the inside address on the letter the PRMA member/rep was John Baxter who at that time was a director of the organization. John was a very early member of the Museum group and was a Port Authority executive at the time.
This scrap of history is very interesting. I knew that Ed Blossom was being advised but don't remember it being discussed as I was attending board meetings at that time. I know what happened to all of the cars but don't want to take the time to detail that here. Maybe I'll create a page on the trolleyology.blogspot.com page that provides that detail.