Does anyone have a roster of electric railway equipment owned by the North Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer Shops? I know that they own the only Piedmont & Northern boxcab in existence, #5103. I would like to know what condition this unit is presently in. I have heard that NCTM owns a New Orleans streetcar, but I don't know anything about this car. Does anyone have information about this car, or any other pieces of equipment at NCTM I have left out?

> Does anyone have a roster of electric
> railway equipment owned by the North
> Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer
> Shops? I know that they own the only
> Piedmont & Northern boxcab in existence,
> #5103. I would like to know what condition
> this unit is presently in. I have heard that
> NCTM owns a New Orleans streetcar, but I
> don't know anything about this car. Does
> anyone have information about this car, or
> any other pieces of equipment at NCTM I have
> left out?

Frank,

The P&N boxcab electric was purchsed from the Atlanta NRHS in 1996. It had been repainted in Atlanta a few years before purchase and is overall in good shape. There are some missing details that need to be filled in--ie, headlights, replica builder's plates, new paneling in the interior. But overall, it's pretty complete and in good shape, on display in the roundhouse as you walk through the door.

The street car has been there as long as I've been coming around--19 years! (Gee, I suddenly feel old, but I swear the first time I was still in college, er, grade school, er...) It's in fair to poor condition, stored in the paint shop, awaiting restoration and eventual display inside the Back Shop.

That's it for the electric stuff at Spencer.

Jim Wrinn


http://nctrans.org
Wrinnbo@aol.com

Frank, if you make it down south, make sure to stop in at Charlotte trolley (not far from Spencer) and see a couple operating cars, one or two under restoration, and a hulk. Also, some remnants of the P&N are still around. If there hadn't been a stadium built downtown, I could show you the site of the passenger depot and frieght shed. NRHS operates a small museum in the P&N depot at Belmont.

There were the remnants of a small single truck car on the platform at Salisbury depot back a few years ago (I am older than Jim) when I did the initial stabilization work on that building but I have lost track of it since. I hear Asheville has saved two carbodies, one semiconvertable, that were used after retirement as a laundry.

In GA, a bait and fish shop in Gainesville had an Atlanta car (probably) and there is a fine two truck Birney body in private hands near Ball Ground, GA. I keep hoping Southeastern Transportation Museum gets that one.

A couple P&N unmotorized cars live in a small private museum near Greenwood, SC.

Dave

lathro19@idt.net