Pennsylvania Trolley Museum visit

Frank writes...

I'm back on the road, traveling for business, very nearly for the first time since March 2020. This past weekend, work took me to Pittsburgh, so of course that meant stopping in and saying hello to Bruce Wells and the folks at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, PA.

As usual, there were a couple of active restoration projects in the shop. Shown here is Philadelphia Peter Witt 8042, which is undergoing a major rebuilding that is being accomplished both by PTM volunteers and by restoration-guru-for-hire Keith Bray. Keith has largely rebuilt both ends of the car and when I was visiting Bruce had just put a coat of paint on new upper-sash windows for the car. Over my left shoulder as I took this photo was Red Arrow center door car 73, which unfortunately I failed to get any photos of. It's been brought into the shop for some steel work.

Another shop project is PTM's Rio open car, which needs work on the motor armature bearings. They're doing this work in-house - above, Art Ellis is using a mill to do some machining on one end of the motor armature shaft.

But the really interesting part of the visit was a tour of PTM's new building. This isn't their impressive new visitor's center - ground has been broken on that and construction should be starting sometime this fall, along with new track down "Trolley Street" that may start being laid as early as next month. No, this is the Reliance Building, an industrial building located right alongside the museum's line roughly halfway between their original museum site and their new east campus.

The Reliance Building is truly impressive. It's about 170'x360', with four 40' wide bays running the length of the building, plus a two-story office wing on one side. Until recently it was occupied by a company that rebuilt, of all things, electric motors for industrial and mining operations. The building came with several overhead cranes, of which the largest are a 20T and 25T, and at least a dozen jib cranes mounted to posts.

When PTM bought the building, they also bid on a couple of the machines, so they got a huge horizontal mill (this is intended to be used for line-boring motor housings and bearings among other things) as well as the lathe in the background of this photo, a 33" machine with a 35' bed. In the foreground are a high-precision Hardinge lathe purchased from government surplus and a forge. The Reliance Building will be used for several different things. First, it will house a machine shop, using the aforementioned machines. Second, it will house the museum's archives. The impending razing of the (rented) building that had been housing the museum's archives was actually what prompted PTM to look seriously at purchasing this building. Third, the building will provide indoor storage for the fleet of rubber-tire maintenance vehicles. Fourth, the office wing will house much of the museum's professional staff. And fifth, there's enough extra space to rent out as commercial warehouse space to earn a bit of income. In the future there's the potential to add more roles. I don't think there are any current plans to run tracks into the building from the adjacent PTM main line but there's nothing that would preclude it.

So anyway, this is quite a step forward for PTM, to go along with the other big steps forward they're making right now like the visitor's center, Trolley Street trackage, and the new wye and track connection to their Artifact Preservation Building. Many thanks to Bruce, Art, and the whole gang for showing me around!