0 Minnesota Streetcar Museum

During a recent trip to Minneapolis, I had a chance to visit a couple of museums for the first time in several years.  The first of these is the Minnesota Streetcar Museum.  I was only able to ride the Lake Harriet line.

MSM has two locations, one in the city at Lake Harriet, and the other at Excelsior near Lake Minnetonka.  Each location has a single-track line about a mile long, and an attached carbarn/shop facility.  Both are located in densely-populated areas with large numbers of walkers, joggers, bikers, and tourists wandering by.  So they seem to get a good crowd of riders, especially when the weather is favorable. 

Car 1300 is a 1908 wooden streetcar built by Twin Cities Rapid Transit, and has been carefully restored and well maintained.  MSM's collection of equipment is entirely cars from the Twin Cities region -- no CTA 4000s or Septa PCCs.   Several, like this one, were built by the TCRT company in its own shops.

Here the motorman is giving a car talk at the end of the line.  When we were there, there was a constant stream of people lining up to ride the car, and at the end of the trip it was load and go.  They try to make a trip every 15 minutes.

The operating crews are all carefully dressed in company uniforms, and present a consistent appearance.  Very commendable.

 

The Lake Harriet line operates over a portion of TCRT ROW.  The station building is a replica of the original one at this location.

I was unable to ride the Excelsior line, or see what was going on in the shops, where several cars are being restored.  In any case, this museum is well worth a visit.  They do an excellent job of recreating the streetcar experience in an urban/suburban setting.

Detail: Minnesota Streetcar Museum

0 Visit to Washington

Frank writes...

Over the weekend business took me to Washington - Pennsylvania, that is.  The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum is one of the more successful trolley museums in the country and has been very good at putting their collection under cover, drawing school groups, attracting business from parties and business organizations, and generally raising their profile as a major tourist attraction in the Pittsburgh area.  PTM is unusual in that it operates on 5'2.5" gauge, which was used by most Pittsburgh and Philadelphia area traction lines.

Bruce Wells is one of their regular volunteers and maintains a blog of activities at PTM here.  He was nice enough to show me some of the progress being made at PTM including restoration work on their West Penn curve-side car, the only Cincinnati curve-side that was preserved intact, as well as a major effort he's engaged in to document, preserve and reproduce advertising cards.  As shown above, I also got to go for a ride on the museum's open car.  This car was originally from Rio de Janeiro and, when in service, would have looked quite a bit like IRM's Rio open car.  Ours would need a bit of work to look this nice, though!

Another highlight was seeing the new Artifact Preservation Building going up at PTM, shown above framed out.  This building is about 40'x220' and is designed to house the museum's collection of spare parts - motors, control parts, air brake and mechanical components, you name it.  The middle of the building will have two storage tracks on 10' centers for storage of "long-term project" cars (the building will not be connected to the rest of the museum's trackage) while the walls will be lined with heavy-duty shelving.  The entire building will be paved to ease access to stored items.  Along one side of the building (to the right in the photo) is an open-sided lean-to where trucks can be stored, out of direct weather but also easily accessed if needed.  It's a well-planned building with an enviable purpose, that of safely housing the spare parts that are so important to keeping museum cars running.

Detail: Visit to Washington

0 Danbury Railway Museum

On our recent trip we made a quick tour of the Danbury Railway Museum in Danbury, Conn.  The museum occupies the old New Haven station in Danbury, as well as most of the railroad yard. 

I didn't get a picture of the station building, but inside there are several interesting displays and several model railroad layouts, some of which operate.  In order to get to the equipment stored in the yard, you have to cross the active tracks used by the commuter trains.

The museum operates excursion trains down the length of the yard, a couple thousand feet.  Sometimes this RDC is used, I believe.

New Haven MU cars.

And this, of course, is an FL-9 in the McGinnis paint scheme.  I guess if it has third rail shoes it can't be all bad.


This wrecker from Grand Central Terminal is quite impressive.

Their one steam locomotive is this B&M 2-6-0, nicely displayed.

And there's lots more.  The museum's website has more information.  There is currently no inside storage for any of the equipment, but they are conducting a capital campaign to raise $1,000,000 to build and equip a six-stall roundhouse.

And I suppose I should mention that the people we talked to were all helpful and informative.

Finally, there's this whimsical "Insulator Garden."  I guess they only grow in rocky soil. 

Detail: Danbury Railway Museum

0 Laconia Car Company

While driving through scenic New Hampshire, the city of Laconia happened to be on our route.  Say, we've got a couple of Laconia cars, so I decided to see if anything was left of the old Laconia Car factory.  We stopped at the public library.  On the second floor there was an extensive display about manufacturing in Laconia; besides railroad cars, other companies made furniture, guns, machine tools, and what not.  The historian there knew all about the car works, and she directed me to it.

Nearly all of the old brick buildings are still in existence, converted into offices, shops, apartments, and so on.  It's a very impressive collection of early industrial architecture.

It's a shame there's nothing like this in Chicago Heights.

Detail: Laconia Car Company

0 Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington

Maine once had a number of 2' gauge railroads, and several groups have preserved some of this equipment.  Although to our eyes they may not appear much larger than park trains, these were projected as fully functional railroads carrying both passengers and freight over long distances.  We visited the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway Museum, which has installed about 2 1/2 miles of track on the right of way of its namesake railroad, and operates some of the original equipment.

 

The museum wasn't running when we were there, but we got a great and very complete tour from one of the members, Jason Lamontagne. 

Here's some of the equipment used for revenue service, at least when steam isn't operating.  The two cars seen here were built by the museum, but stored inside is an original Jackson and Sharpe coach, nicely restored.

Jason told me some history of the line, which was quite interesting.  Wiscasset is a small port town with a sheltered harbor on the coast of Maine.  Local businessmen originally projected a railroad from Wiscasset all the way to Quebec.  Because Quebec is usually ice-bound for much of the winter, and Wiscasset isn't, the "riches of Quebec" would be transported down to their hometown for loading onto ships and sent to all parts of the world.  But money was slow in coming in (where have we heard that before?) and in order to start construction, they decided a 2' gauge railroad was the most economical choice.  It got up to Waterville, but that's about it.  This undersized line lasted until 1933.  But I would certainly agree that this was a fascinating niche of the railroading industry.

So the museum is trying to recreate what they can of the WW&F, on the original right of way with as much original equipment as has survived.  That includes two locomotives.

This is WW&F #10, an 0-4-4 Forney built by Vulcan in 1904, which has been restored and operates regularly over the line.






Also in the shop is #9, another 0-4-4 Forney built by Portland in 1891.  It's undergoing a complete restoration.  It has a new boiler and a mostly-rebuilt frame, among other things.  Jason and I discussed several of the issues they've had to face in getting this engine back into service.

The original boiler and frame are stored outside.

Let's look down the track a little ways.  Top speed on this 2' gauge track would be about 35 MPH, I believe. 

I just love three-way stub switches.  Why can't we have one at IRM?

 

Ordinary water tanks are too ugly, I suppose, for this scenic area.  So here's what they had instead.  This is a very impressive reconstruction.

Now that my daughter and her husband are living near Boston, I hope to have occasion to visit here again when steam is running.  This is a very interesting operation.

Detail: Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington