I'm now back from another nice trip to Arizona, mostly to visit grandchildren and their parents, but I usually get to do a little railfanning. This time I paid another visit to the Arizona Railway Museum in Chandler, with a guided tour by my old friend Jerry McGonigle, a very long-time member of IRM.
You will note that he's quite well dressed for an Arizonan: an IT cap and a 309 T shirt! I had a great time talking with him -- he's one of the few people around that remembers the old days in North Chicago.
ARM is basically a static museum with an extensive collection of equipment, with an emphasis on historic passenger cars, many of which have been finely restored and are open for display. We've seen many of these before on previous posts, which you can access via the Trip Reports page. While I was there on a Friday morning, several volunteers were working on the interior of a recently acquired Santa Fe dome car. They generally start work early in the morning and go until lunch time; in the afternoon it's just too hot to work.
And they have also restored some local freight equipment, as seen here.
Anyway, Jerry is the head of the one-man Electric Car Department. The collection consists of this Toronto PCC. It has local significance because it was bought by the Phoenix transit agency many years ago as a display piece, to somehow drum up enthusiasm for the light rail system they wanted to build. Once the system got going, the PCC was surplus and wound up at Chandler. It's been recently moved, and is on display as seen here.
Unfortunately, I got there one day too early. Jerry had scheduled a contractor with a bucket truck to lift the 50' of trolley wire into place over the car the next day. But you can easily see what it will look like.
This car has plastic shields over the dashlights, which don't fare well in the Arizona sun. He's looking for some sort of replacement.
The interior is in good condition. These sheets are hung to keep the sun out, of course, and will be removed when the car is open for visitors.
The pole will be put on the wire to run the lights and blower when it's open for visitors.
The museum continues to expand, and more storage tracks are being built northward.
And here's something that comes in handy: a mobile car washer!
Finally, I might reveal that we enjoy Arizona so much that we decided to buy a house, near where our daughter lives, as a luxurious vacation home.
It's sort of a fixer-upper, but nothing I can't handle.
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